Book Review: Noon at Five o'clock by Arthur Yap
Perhaps 'sparse' is a better word than 'succinct' when it comes to Arthur Yap's writing. Yet his stories are anything but; the simplicity of his words hardly represent the complex weave of his work. The passivity of his narration, broken between unassuming sentences, lulls readers into a disconcerted stagnance. Rather, we might perceive the voice of a highly conscious individual, peeling the world back layer by clean-cut layer.
Verses and stanzas live in his stories. He catches, in lightning-fast snapshots, the nooks and crannies of a society we become ignorant of -- the ruminations of a young boy as he wanders his neighbourhood, the coming-and-going of a child with Down's Syndrome, a husband and wife working fruitlessly to undo their undoings. There is no substantial plot-line, but every lexical photograph offers a little gift that we, in our haste, might have missed.
Yap lived through much of the founding years of Singapore, which is reflected in his work depicting daily life, although his subject matter is neither superficial nor frivolous. He astutely notes in his commentary about the development of short stories from 1950s to 1970s that “unless the ideas are either startling or profound enough, it is unlikely that the story can be expected to be borne solely by the weight of the ideas alone.”
This has repercussions on his subject matter, where there is either explicit conflict, or hints at societal or personal problems beyond the surface. You could call it being ‘politically incorrect’, but these are often an undeniable part of the history of Singapore.
A personal favourite is “The Effect of a Good Dinner”. Yap adopts the persona of a casual storyteller: recounting a story of his grandfather and mother, and their experience with polygamy. Intriguingly, although the story is oriented towards the conflict between husband and wife and a potential wife, the ending (which usually holds Yap’s key statements) and the title of this story are about a good dinner; perhaps he wants to remind us that, even though polygamy is a tradition of the past, the soothing effect of a merry dinner is very much still relevant. Because of that, his stories have not lost relevance due to time, as he has chosen to write about fundamental behaviours of people that can still be observed in our society.
“Noon at Five O’Clock: A collected short stories of Arthur Yap” reconciles a rapidly urbanising city with the remnants of its past, from old and creaky coffeeshops to the cultural dissonance created by the English language. This volume includes an introduction to the short stories of Arthur Yap. Read together, one can discover the nuances that existed and still exist in Singaporean society and the intangible bits of its expeditious development.
To end off, this particular book is recommended because it offers a deep analysis of Arthur Yap in relation to his experience as a Singaporean through the founding years. Its uniqueness and relevance marks it as a great example of the Singapore Literature genre.