STATE OF EMERGENCY, historical novel about Singapore, Malaya, and how Malaysia came to be

STATE OF EMERGENCY
JEREMY TIANG
World Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.99 trade paper

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Siew Li leaves her husband and children in Tiong Bahru to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency. And in Singapore, Siew Li's niece Stella finds herself accused of being a Marxist conspirator.

Jeremy Tiang's debut novel dives into the tumultuous days of leftist movements and political detentions in Singapore and Malaysia. It follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region. What happens when the things that divide us also bind us together?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What happens when a woman dedicates herself to The Cause (whichever one it might be)? The kind of dedication that requires her to leave family behind, the way men have for millennia? She gets special treatment, in the worst sense of the words "special" when she is caught by the apparatus of state repression. That apparatus crushes communist cadres for the British Empire, then the state that became Malaysia, because heaven knows we can't have people thinking they have rights, deserve consultation on the way they'll be governed, any of that disorderly democratic foolishness! The people don't know (ever, according to their rulers) what is good for them! We'll have to lock 'em up and torture 'em for a while. How long? Who asked you, foreigner, to butt into our business?! Hand over some money so we can torture a few people you don't like, shut up and go away.

Authoritarians all have their eyes on the same hymnal, their hands in the same pot, and their souls AWOL. Doesn't matter the name of their "belief/political system" because they in themselves do not change.

Now that you're all ready for the read...understand that the prose is good but simple (Something heavy was settling onto her, an unpleasant awareness that the world was aslant and she was at the higher end. What could she do?), the characters are good but simple, the world they want to create is good but simple. I learned a good deal about the Emergency, something I wasn't very familiar with compared to the contemporaneous Viet Cong insurgency against the French. Unsurprising from a US reader...and also clear proof British propaganda efforts to keep the monster of American public opinion far away from the fraying Empire's horrific abuses.

There are six loosely linked PoVs in the story. It isn't the smoothest narrative technique but, for this time-hopping story, it works to the advantage of the tale of the Emergency as it develops and resonates through this clan's life. You'll need to be aware of who is addressing you to fully invest in their story, but it is not made difficult for you by Author Tiang. No unusual demands on your concentration are made, no mid-narrative jumps or other such Woolfian stuff; making it into Orlando: A Biography is not his aim.

I found its structure and its voice very easy to immerse myself into, allowing new information to settle into the places I lacked it. I was surprised to learn that women would be aware of what awaited them but still join the rebels. Sexist assumptions are hard to shed, clearly. Very much an ongoing project and welcome to find it reinforced here.

I'm ready for Author Tiang's next book whenever it comes. He has that thing no one can teach: Seeing his story through to its own ends. Nothing forced or misplaced. I'd've bestowed that fifth star had he done a tad bit more to signal how the interconnections really worked, but that isn't a full-star-off offense.