Catherine Lim
Personal Information
Description
Catherine Lim born in 1942 in Kulim, Malaysia. She received her B.A. from the University of Malaya in 1963 and immigrated to Singapore in 1967. Her first short story collection was published in 1978. Her first novel (The Serpent's Tooth) was published in 1982. She received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the National University of Singapore in 1988. She and attended Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990 as a Fulbright Scholar. She has also worked as a teacher of Socio-Linguistics and Literature. In 1992, she decided to write full-time. She has published more than 10 collections of short stories, five novels, and two poetry collections.
Books
Unhurried Thoughts at My Funeral
The author portrays herself as dead and lying in her coffin. During the three days before the final consignment to dust and oblivion, as friends, relatives, ex-colleagues, fans, lovers and total strangers come to pay their respects, she indulges, for the last time, her love of story-telling. Around each visitor she weaves a dazzling tale with her usual exuberant wit, comic brio and warm empathy. But the tales are more than just that. They are the triggering points for what is the central concern of this book - the exploration of those achingly urgent human questions that everyone asks at some time or other in his or her life: Who are we? Where did we come from? What is the purpose of life? What happens after death? Why are we here at all? What is our conception of god in an age of undisputed scientific power? How should we view good and evil, pain and suffering? Is there such a thing as Ultimate Truth? What does it mean to be human?
The Song of Silver Frond
"One morning in Singapore more than fifty years ago, The Venerable One - a wealthy, respected, handsome Chinese patriarch, head of a large household of three wives and many children and grandchildren - takes a walk by a cemetery. There, a young village egg-seller, Silver Frond, is amusing herself with a comic song-and-dance act based on popular gossip - about him. The meeting instantly changes their lives."--BOOK JACKET.
A Leap of Love
There is a wonderful ancient Western tradition that allows a woman to propose to a man; but only on 29 February, only once every four years, in a Leap Year. On such a momentous day, late one morning in modern Singapore, Li-ann, young, bright, beautiful, catches sight of Jeremy for the first time in a busy part of town. She realizes, with a start, that he is her dream man, and makes the move allowed by the Leap Year tradition.
Miss Seetoh in the World
"Miss Maria Seetoh, a teacher of English and Literature in St Peter's Secondary School in Singapore, sees herself as a 'simple soul who only wants to be a good and happy person', and has a dream to write stories about 'simple, ordinary people going about their daily lives'. However, God/ Providence/Fate/Chance, etc. decrees otherwise. She is thrown into the tumult of a disastrous marriage that begins as strangely as it ends, a failed love affair that 'hollows her out', and a controversial teaching career that ends with her abrupt resignation. Most of all, she is caught in a political event as shocking in its causes as in its consequences. Set against the backdrop of modern-day Singapore, a hugely successful city-state grappling with changes and challenges that could corrode the very soul, the novel ultimately examines, with wit, wry irony and warm understanding, the unchanging quandaries of the human condition, when love and sex, religion and politics, tradition and modernity, can all come together in an unruly mix, to show human nature at its most depressing and its most inspiring"--
Humoresque
Glamorous socialite Helen Wright takes what she wants - clothes, alcohol, men - and uses them up and tosses them aside. Then she meets a brilliant young violinist, Paul Boray. But this is one toy she can't break.