The school's too prudish, really. AJC rocks :P
Book thoughts:
Colin Cheong - seventeen
A book from the other side - Giving a human face to Hualalalala.
The concept of this book was most interesting - JC fiction. For those of you who are deprived (like me), reading this book might, erm, enrich you. That didn't come out very well, but I'm lazy so I'll leave it as it is.
The reader can tell that this book is predicated on JC life a long time ago, but most of it remains a poignant reminder of the joys of JC life (or maybe NS life is just too droll in comparison, I don't know). The writer makes JC relationships sound so very sweet - it sounds wonderful to be in the same school asyour significant other.
I didn't like the chaotic introduction, with the seemingly nonsensical and unlinked sentences, which gave me no idea what the writer was talking about. Actually I suspect it is a literary device used by insecure writers to give their works a veneer of sophistication, but luckily the narrative picked up and resolved into something intelligible after a few pages. In the rest of the book, the writer neglects to use any inverted commas, so it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is speaking. Again, I think this is an attempt at faux sophistication, but the book was still interesting enough - or played on the nostalgia factor sufficiently - to keep me reading. Otherwise, the writing was a little raw, but fresh.
Something that I'm somewhat disturbed by - what's the deal about Convent Girls? Extracts from Pages 12-13: "I'm going to Catholic [JC] too. Where the Convent girls are, Heaven is too... Uni or girls, man, you have to choose, Tim says. I think he just wants to keep the Convent girls to himself... In any case, at the tender but turgid age of 16, I wisely choose my future over Convent girls."
I didn't like the ending of the story, though, as it left me rather disturbed. The ghost bit was very unbelievable, and the death was too abrupt: it put me in the mind of the stories I used to write for my own chinese essays. The dramatic (if cliched) ending does make the story more memorable, but it doesn't sit well in my stomach. One is tempted to suspect that the tragedy is inserted for its sake - and at such an opportune moment, too. One calamity is more than enough - why have another? That said, I did feel like crying for the protagonist, so the writing was rather emotive.