by Susan Abraham
Well...I flew into Singapore early this morning and will fly out once more tonight as I leave this weekend for Australia. To follow those famous lyrics from Leaving on a Jetplane, it's a case of 'All my bags are packed and I'm ready to go..."
I'm off to explore Arab & Bagdad Streets and Singapore's Chinatown for the moment. I am engulfed now only with vague memories at the most of these particular locations; it's been a few good years and way too long for Singapore to once more reach out her hand to me, while armed with her breathy hint of seduction for an assortment of quaint nooks and alleys, not often seen to the eye.
However, I have heard from Amanda Sington-Williams (pictured here) this morning - she authors an exciting historical novel, The Eloquence of Desire - so will not go off without leaving you a few poignant thoughts on how she views her new book to be published shortly by Sparkling Books in the UK. Her romantic plot focusses on a slice of old Malaya and you may read much more from my first blog post on the subject over Here. - susan abraham
Below, Amanda Sington-Williams (AMS) explains why she set The Eloquence of Desire in old Malaysia.
"Before I embarked on my novel, I wrote a short story called ‘The Carving’ which was set in Malaysia during the 1930s. This was shortlisted for The Asham Award and I thought I would take the three central characters and transform them into a novel. But I decided to move them on a bit time-wise as I’ve always had a fascination for the 1950s, the fashions and how the nuclear family were presented as perfect, how any flaws were concealed during that period. Books and films set during that period also influenced my decision to set it then. Also I wanted to set the novel before independence but during the Emergency which lasted twelve years." - AMS
...and on her connections with Malaysia...
"My grandparents lived in Malaysia for twenty two years and my mother and aunt both spent their childhoods there. I grew up with anecdotes of life there and I’ve spent long periods of time in Malaysia. This was a huge influence on my decision to set the novel there. I found old family photographs of my grandparent’s colonial house as well as pictures of the landscape and I was able to see the clothes people wore. My characters live in the houses that my family occupied, though my imagination played a large part too. When I was researching for the novel I came across a journal that a relative called Derrick Sington had written when he was a foreign correspondent for The Manchester Guardian in 1955. It had lots of information about the Emergency and that settled the date in which to set the novel – 1955, the year before independence." - AMS
Amanda’s book, The Eloquence of Desire will be published by Sparkling Books on June 14th 2010.
For more information on Amanda Sington-Williams, you may click on her Website. For added information on The Eloquence of Desire, you may click on Sparkling Books.
(This post was originally slotted into an older Wordpress blog on February 26th, 2010.)
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