Book Description

This debut collection by Yeo Wei Wei explores the realms between private selves, past and present, through vivid and haunting motifs—a singing bird, a lost soul in a yellow umbrella, an ivory carving, the diary of an ex-boyfriend's father. Revealing the regrets, obsessions, loss and sorrow of events in everyday life, These Foolish Things &Other Stories is a compelling piece of work ready to haunt, delight and touch its readers. A wife returns home to find that her husband has remarried ... An old woman in a nursing home is visited by a mynah that sings a Beatles song ... An artist remembers the time he was harangued by rambutans, magoes and other fruits in his studio ... “No word is out of place in Yeo Wei Wei’s exacting prose. The reader’s expectations and positions of empathy are put to the test in ways that both delight and shatter the heart.” -Cyril Wong, author of Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light and The Dictator's Eyebrow “Yeo Wei Wei weaves a purgatorial web of men and women caught between guilt, loss and unbearable longing. Her stories are intelligent, haunting, carefully composed yet deeply felt.” -Clarissa Oon, arts editor, The Straits Times “Yeo Wei Wei is set on uncovering whole realms between private past and present and between private selves; in the process, she justifies the incidence of art. Let each tale here walk your mind as though it were a painting -Gwee Li Sui, literary critic, graphic artist and author of One Thousand and One Nights: Love Poems