#jon gresham

We Rose Up Slowly by Jon Gresham

Great book. A collection of speculative short stories, some of them reworking legends and real events. My favourite was “Rashid at The Sail”, simply because I liked the bit of optimism in it. My least favourite is “Walking Backwards Up Bukit Timah Hill”, because I felt it was too strange, yet not strange enough to be mindblowing. 

And on the topic of “strangeness”, it’s a pity, but perhaps because the book starts with the memorably unquotidian “We Rose Up Slowly”, I found myself expecting some unnatural element in the following stories. This expectation impeded my immersion into some stories, because I was always looking out for something else. Nevertheless, this is a small gripe and wouldn’t be a problem if the reader encountered these stories separately - as they would have been when first published in various different collections. 

Other People’s Cats - my favourite line is “I am not your manic pixie dream girl.”

A Fleeting Tenderness at the End of Night - the first time I read this I was vaguely disatisfied. I felt that though some expressions were clever - the shit on streets/ don’t shit on me twist of stereotypes, some lines of direct speech - “let me protect you in my cocoon, inside my spaceship. Let us fly through the night together” - verged on the artificial and wouldn’t be said irl. Unexpectedly, I found it thoughtful and charming upon my second read. True, the cringey lines are still cringey, but writing is a craft, and it’s plain that the author took pains to subtly weave in “clues” to the conclusion. I didn’t catch those on my first read, and catching them on my second was a pleasant glimpse into another dimension of the story. I also picked up more mirroring of speech/actions that (again, subtly) showed that the first person narrative of one character was based on misunderstanding and was flawed. Given the suspension of belief one has when viewing fiction, I hadn’t realised that on my first read. 

Final verdict: 

Definitely worth re-reading. I’m considering buying a copy and bringing it to China as a Sing Lit rec. 

Post-script: 

The sensuous descriptions are quite tingly - “soft as a vole”. Whoosh. 

~~ read the following after you’ve read the book ~~