The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza by Cyril Wong

It was very well-crafted, and I could feel the fragility of the characters' relationships (and lives, even) emanating from the page. It addresses homophobia in a creative way, with striking imagery and subtle dialogue and interactions. 'The Boy With The Flower That Grew Out Of His Ass' was definitely my favourite one, and it's one that is quite well-known in Singapore. There were, however, a few stories I really liked. The dialogue is probably the worst part, reading extremely unnatural and forced, making the relationships between the characters seem inauthentic.

The author tries too hard to make a point, his metaphors becoming too obvious in the process, the stories turning into cliches. I liked the queerness of these stories a lot, but unfortunately didn't get along with the writing style in a lot of the tales.

So desperate to become a vaster aspect of nothingness, you reach out with a hundred, non-existent limbs roots dragging out of the seemingly infrangible earth, branches reaching the shivery blades of stars.A very gay and magical collection of stories. You are forgetting who you once were-the more you lengthen from the ground, the more you forget. Then arising, a movement like a sapling uncurling, shaking off the soil. A few hours pass-or hundreds of years-you will never know. Followed by a choice: without any eyes to close, to shut out the remembering, you close them, anyway. And the memories keep coming-the trauma and the suffering. A wail radiates from the centre of your being. You relive each memory as if it were the first time-as if you were the one that was hurt, as if you were there. Memories of everybody you have ever hurt fill you, alternating with memories of everybody who hurt you. Before your fear can overwhelm, the ground opens under your sliding feet, making way like smooth lips lustily parting.įalling into darkness, your body-which was never really flesh or bone-melting off you, until you are unalloyed consciousness, nude and raw. Some even look up from their instruments to observe you approaching. The closer you dance, float, even leap to the orchestra on their circular, open-air platform, perhaps you notice that the musicians are missing their faces. By the end of every night, one of you succumbs to the music, gliding down the grass to the stage-sometimes dancing, arms raised in the air. If you cannot remember, each time after parting ways, all of you come back to the garden again, ready to unburden your testimonies in growing clusters under the watchful stars. A bullet to the side of your skull would do as much good as a toothpick under the fingernail, since we are here.

The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza by Cyril Wong