Title: Lake Like a Mirror
Author: Ho Sok Fong
Published: 10th March 2020
Pages: 240
Hello my fellow Bookworms and page turners,
We are expanding our horizons quite a bit these last few weeks, this week we are having a look at this piece by a malasyian author. Hold onto your hats, because its about to get a little weird up in here!.
Lake like a mirror is a collection of small storiers written by Malaysian/Chinsese author Ho Sok Fong, whose first published story was banned from papers in Malaysia, so that might give you an idea as to what the general themes of her writing usually follow.
There is a strong unconventional eerie tension at the centre of these short stories. However, this has nothing to do with their overall plots, but instead is created via the evershifting perspectives of the characters within them. At any point they could be consumed, saved or face an even worse fate.
This is not an easy read though, and I am not sure if this is due to the translation or the cultural differnces between an Englishman and the authour. But, not all of the stories follow our traditional narrative closure, leaving the reader to use their own imagination and interpretation of events within the story to create their own definitive ending. But despite this there is considerable progression within each of the tales and reading them is defintiley a unique experience, but given the lack of closure I understand this will be a required taste.
Overall these are some very well crafted individual stories with high tension and some beautiful prose, and for those of you with an imagination and an open mind i feel this is a short story series that you would enjoy.
Until next time, read more books!
Between|the|Blurb 