Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places by Verena Tay

Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places Reviews

• 
  Daren

  This book is a collection of short stories, collected by, and edited by Verena Tan. The criteria for authors is that they have lived in their respective Singaporean neighbourhood for over a decade. Most are Singaporean authors, at least two are expats who have lived long term in Singapore.
  There is no specific central theme, but most recall childhood, or memories of the neighbourhood and how they change over time.
  
  As usual with these types of collection, there are a little hit and miss.
  
  The ones which stood out to me were:
  The Tontine Leader by Carena Chor, which describes a child's view of her mother running three tontines in the local neighbourhood, taking the risk to supplement a meager income, and the implications of someone not paying their dues.
  
  Enough by Shelley Bryant, telling of a female police officers day, dealing with Thai prostitutes people-smuggled to Singapore, and her sister in an abusive relationship.
  
  Forgotten by Alex Mitchell, describing an old, little known house in his parents neighbourhood, and a son who becomes caught up in his international modern life.
  
  Most were 3/5 star, another couple were 3.5 or 4 star. The above stories were 4.5 stars.
  Averaging near 4 stars.
• 
  Puri Kencana Putri

  I couldn't find the first edition of Balik Kampung (prior of this book) when I visited Singapore last time. But to read the 2A could make your heart feel content. Why I said so? All the stories are related between people and places. Something to Remember, the last title of 11 short stories even could bring up your memory on how to rekindled time and space and the limited of memory.
  
  However, my favorite one is written by Cyril Wong. She could bring her childhood memory when she lived in Bedok. A story that occurred when her mother was accused to steal clothes from a shopping centre. She wrote it for the sake to ease her trauma. "People make mistakes. The important thing is that we don't make the same mistakes again."
• 
  Theo Chen

  Balik Kampung - "return to village" - a phrase that's existed in the aural landscape of my life since I was little. In many ways, returning to Singapore after being abroad is difficult. There is disconnect, there is confusion about what building a home means, and whether the country I find myself moving through is still that - my home? This is something I struggled with coming home on my breaks from school, and though there was normally a period of adjustment, I always found it funny how as soon as I'd begun to adjust to life here, it was a sure sign that I was a few days away from leaving again - it was one of those quirks I felt life played for me, one I had to smile and take. Coming home again for National Service, I knew it would be the case that I'd be leaving again anytime soon, and settling into Singapore has taken time and genuine concerted effort. It's not just about going out, doing things, meeting friends: it's about the way you approach those things, a mindset. It's unlearning my distaste for things in Singapore that weren't westernized, teaching myself to untangle a view of interesting from my ideas of Western society. Examining and reinterpreting an aesthetic sensibility that I didn't even know was being dictated to me. All this and much more is required to look at this place with brand new eyes. One of my favorite ways to see has been through my commitment to reading Singaporean literature. And in this way, Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, has not disappointed.
  
  What a veritable delight, a smorgasbord of gifts, that this book leaves its reader. It's funny - in one of the author's notes, where they detail their connection to the place they've written about, they write how funny it is to them to gander to the East Coast of Singapore and feel like they are in a completely different world. I have often felt the same way too - how small Singapore is and yet how many places have I never laid my feet in? Luckily for me, this book helps me do some of the work of exploring a country I've spent most of my life living in. It provides a map of Singapore - and then generously fills in every contour, every space, with characters, who have rich emotional interior lives: they have hopes, dreams, thoughts, irritations, loves, and more. I so thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, not only because reading short stories always leaves me amazed by the talent of writers to assemble something so simple and concise, but packed with so much depth. Thinking back now, I can recall such delight I took in reading of wonderful idiosyncratic characters, so specific, so believable, that they jump off the page. I think this is the blessing of reading local literature: they help me to take what I regard as mundane in my brain, and they make it important. They take something as simple as the clouds rolling by and make it beautiful - teaching me to make it beautiful too. It's the depictions of Singapore in it's earlier days, the descriptions of playgrounds, kitchens, libraries, all these spaces so familiar to me; and filling them with the magic of imagination. I can't stress enough how fulfilled I feel reading this book. Reading it brings up so much for me to ponder and reflect on: my relationship to our helper at home, how integral a part of my family she is, and how anguished I'd be if she left, yet acknowledging that she came into our home in order to support her own family overseas. This is just one example of the way this book has made me think deeply about my life here and the country I inhabit.
  
  These stories ache with longing, with struggle, with hardship - but also an understanding that this is what living is all about, and they give Singaporeans the space to be; to live their lives just the way they already are. I am so thankful to live a life with them in it. In reading this I am returning to my village, happy to be going back.
• 
  Alifia Virra

  I've visited Singapore few times and wondering how the people and places actually are. All I know, Singapore is business country, or well-designed country, or country for out-comers. But, somehow I feel there is something missing about Singapore as a place.
  I recommend to feel it as much as possible when reading this book. They (the writers) gave stories about space where they used to be -something that missing and where still exist in the present time. All of that are written in fictional short-stories.
• 
  Angela

  Even in a country as small as Singapore, it amazes me how much you can be ignorant of despite growing up there and spending more than half your life there. However, that's probably true of most people. We traverse the same circles most of our lives. It's also fascinating to see my birth country from different perspectives and time frames. Many of the stories are well-written little gems of fiction. A few are mediocre but altogether a lovely collection. Highly recommended for its nostalgic factor for gen x and earlier.
• 
  Nia Nymue

  I read one review that said wrote that the stories all resemble one another and I got a little apprehensive about reading this. The rating when I looked it up on Goodreads was also less than 3.5 (one of my criteria when deciding whether to start a book), so I'm doing my part rating it a 4/5, to bump it up a bit.
  
  Some of the stories each succeed in capturing the atmosphere of a particular part of Singapore. I can't confirm all of them because I'm not familiar enough with some parts of Singapore. To some extent, it could be generic also because it's not a very big country so maybe the regional differences aren't that big. But there are enough differences for there to be different types of characters in different stories, different matters of importance.
  
  I read another review that rated all the short stories in the anthology they read so I'm going to try to do that here.
  
  Peace is a foot reflexology parlour, Joshua Ip
  3.5/5
  Realistic and I can relate. The part where the narrator screamed at the end was a bit too abrupt for me, however. But I guess he really was frustrated.
  
  The Bush, Woon Chet Choon
  3/5
  Fine, but nothing that resonated.
  
  Missing, Ng Swee San
  4.5/5
  I'm familiar with the area. Although the story could have taken place anywhere else, I think it was a great plot used to show off the different parts of Balestier.
  
  65 Eden Grove: Morning by Sonny Lim
  1.5/5
  I wasn't convinced that the narrator is a young boy. The author didn't put himself enough in the mind of the child, like when it took on an omniscient perspective sometimes to explain the boy's thoughts and behaviour, before switching back to ineffability.
  
  Enough, by Shelly Bryant
  3/5
  This is probably a scenario that would happen in Woodlands.
  
  The Mistake, Cyril Wong
  1.5/5
  Like the previous story that took on the perspective of a child, except a bit bizarre when the child suddenly seems to be possessed and spoke like an adult. This is a personal story by the author so perhaps he's trying to process what happened still, but it's just not natural for children to be so wise like that, for an extended period of time. Maybe a snippet or a brief insight, but a speech like that, given the trauma he just had, is rather unrealistic.
  
  The Tontine Leader, by Carena Chor
  2/5
  Need not have taken place at this location at all. I barely recall what the location was.
  
  Amy's Story, by Sharon Lim
  4/5
  Beautiful, surreal story, but didn't mention much about the location apart from one feature. If it weaved in the location more, I'd rate it higher. Beautiful story nonetheless.
  
  Forgotten, by Alex Mitchell
  3.5/5
  I think this story would work out nicely as a short film. The transition to the ending would be much more poetic. The signposting in written form is too glaring. Also, this shows off the location chosen, but in a slight cheating way (through jogging through the area, mostly).
  
  Anak, by Lynn Dresel
  4/5
  So realistic I wonder if the author is retelling something she heard from her neighbour's house. Some brief, physical description of Bedok, but what a mood to choose for Bedok.
  
  Something to Remember, by Robert Yeo
  4.5/5
  I wish this story were longer, not necessarily so that the ending would be different, but just to really stretch out some feelings and moods first, before that ending. Also best dialogue from the whole anthology is here:
  
  "In Singapore you can't go away too long. You come back and the building is not there any more."
  "Don't talk about going away. More painful to be here and watch the buildings go down."
  
  Overall, more 3.5/5 than 4/5, but I wanted to bump the rating up a bit more.
• 
  Xuan

  An anthology of stories through time and places in Singapore, with stories from different decades from the lenses of people of all ages. I enjoyed some shorts over some others, but they generally left a sense of bookish emptiness (that I liked) in well written prose. Nostalgic for people who've seen Singapore through the ages (especially with frequent notes on construction) and rather eye-opening for youngins like myself.
  
  Would definitely check out the other anthologies in the series!
• 
  Rachel

  I thought this was a mediocre collection of short stories, or a collection of mediocre short stories – while the writing quality was mostly decent/good across the board, the stories didn't vary much in tone, subject, setting, or quality. Additionally, I thought the stories lacked good editing – scenes in the stories didn't feel thoughtfully chosen, and in many of the stories I found myself questioning the point of scenes / events that didn't seem to add to the piece.
• 
  mantareads

  A collection of 11 short stories that started out really impressively. The first 6 stories were powerful reads, but I think this book peaked after Cyril Wong's sharply poignant "The Mistake" .
  
  I felt like the remaining half of the book simply lost steam, with stories that slowly faded into forgettable, clichés about Singapore. A disappointing end for what otherwise started as a very promising read about this strange island.
• 
  Maya Saputra

  Lovely as always <3 I think this is the second book from the Balik Kampung series that I read, yet I never got bored of it! There's always comforting presence in every story, as if I'm hearing a story around the corner of my neighborhood. I guess I'll never get bored of these 'neighborhood tales' :)
• 
  Ernest

  Balik Kampung 2A is a strong entry within my favourite Singlit short-story series, anchored in the individual relationships forged with space.
  
  Unlike other books in the Balik Kampung series centered on a particular region, stories here need not reference any individual neighbourhood, even as the reflexology parlours (Joshua Ip’s ‘Peace is a Foot Reflexology Parlour’) or police stations (Shelly Bryant’s ‘Enough’) are necessarily bound by their localities. This entry does not feel like a residual collection of stories unable to make it into the rest (‘Northern Shores’ or ‘Some East, More West’ of other volumes), but stand strongly by themselves. Verena Tay has mandated each contributor live in their neighbourhoods for more than a decade, but this has not excluded immigrants either. Here I am thinking of the occasional debate that pops up surrounding what constitutes Singlit – what if authors based here don’t hold a Singaporean passport? If they’ve grown up here but since left Singapore? This collection also affirms what seems to me the obvious answer – yes, and yes, they still write Singlit.
  
  Sometimes, more ethnographic, intensely local Singaporean short stories return to familiar tropes – the neighbourhood kopitiam, hardy little businesses that defy shopping malls, a transit through Changi Airport, the oppressive, oppressive heat. Nothing inherently wrong with using these, which after all are commonalities. Here, these ‘quintessentially Singaporean’ occasions, bordering on the mundane, stand out in more unusual situations that tease out, or quite explicitly discuss, the various socioeconomic tensions beneath the surface. Take Bryan’s ‘Enough’ – Thai prostitutes, trafficked into Singapore, do not simply appear as battered victims or figures of social deviance. Literature articulates, reproduces an idea of a Singaporean community – given that Singlit has been more recently expanding and highly cognizant of the regime of lowly-paid migrant labour, cleaved by gender, and nationality, how might we expand this framework to better incorporate illegal labour too?
  
  Likewise, stories that appear to speak to a bygone age – like Carena Chor’s The Tontine Leader – suggest that social institutions now past are not merely historical relics. Tontines – a kind of highly informal money-pooling lottery, social-insurance function generate highly personal pressures and weave a dense web of social obligations. Not all is lost in nostalgia. Sure, Cyril Wong is less convincing here presenting the lens of a young boy (‘The Mistake’) – but there is no doubt surrounding the traumatic aftermath the everyday pressures of poverty forcing people into breaking the law.
  
  The chief difficulty within this collection, where some stories are noticeable weaker, then surrounds how to bookend these little vignettes, to weave them into a wider social fabric or rhythm of life. Take the more unsatisfying endings here (Sonny Lim trails off: “Ah Tee lingered just a moment longer. Then with a sigh of inexpressible disappointment, he turned around and walked back into the darkness of the shop.”; or consider the paralysis at the end of Sharon Lim’s ‘Amy’s Story’). There is a sense that for all the little tensions and discoveries, we must segue back into life. How do we contextualise these moments of interiority with the weeks, months, years that these estates hum along for?
  
  Balik Kampung – ‘Return to Village’. Together with the other books in the series, ‘2A’ is thought-provoking, humanizing. It provides a sense of identity – yours, mine, ours?
  
• 
  Damon

  Ostensibly, the motif for the eleven short stories in this book is based on several districts around Singapore. If there is a unifying theme to be found, it is probably somewhere between nostalgia and loss. The authors' vignettes are competently written, but almost universally decline to address the bigger question that they all seem to raise, that is, how is a personal connection to a location altered when that area undergoes a drastic transformation? Through these stores, we see protagonists consider this issue, but rarely attempt to find a deeper answer. For anyone interested in Singapore or this style of storytelling, I would direct them to Tay's Spaces: People/Places first.
  
  I found this book satisfying, and worth a read for anyone interested in slices of life in Singapore. One note of caution for the casual reader is that much of the dialogue is in the local Singaporean dialect of English, and although context will help the reader part of the way, some of the text will remain enigmatic to the uninitiated.
• 
  Leong Chin Yee

  Simple stories that evokes memories of my growing up years and also reflecting the situation I am in now...returning for the family and always feeling lost at all the changes and developments that has happened and still happening all around!