A flash of red and grey feathers. The pungent smell of durian fruit. I crane my neck, raising myself up onto my tiptoes to see what everyone’s crowding around. There’s a blue bird cage mounted on a wheeled walking frame, sunflower seeds scattering at our feet. A woman, perhaps in her early seventies, is taking her pet parrot shopping.
I’ve come to Bedok — one of Singapore’s oldest residential neighbourhoods, in the east of the city — to meet three generations of the Soh family, who have called this area home for almost eight decades. They’ve brought me to 58 Bedok Market, a low-rise, red-and-white-tiled building stocking everything from fish balls to toilet bleach. We’re here to pick up seafood and spices for lunch at their home and cooking school, One Kind House. The matriarch — a petite woman with pink lipstick, pencilled eyebrows and long, midnight-blue nails, who introduces herself simply as ‘Mamma Soh’ — soon tires of looking at the parrot and sets off towards the fish counters. Mamma Soh will be celebrating her 80th birthday next year, but I struggle to keep up as she makes a beeline past the piles of squid and cuttlefish the size of my forearm, towards the golden pomfrets: plump, silver fish with sunflower-yellow fins.
DuBois' writing has only gained depth over the years. The language is simple but elegant, and the worlds described are full of pain and wonder, love and loss. DuBois' work is a perfect starter book for any reluctant reader of poetry, and it's sure to convert them into lifelong lovers of the craft, just as Quinn's English teacher Ms. Koval encourages Quinn's transformation into a budding poet.
The novel unfolds against the backdrop of plague, revolt and the rise of the Lollards. This is a spare, uncluttered book, free of the Wikipedia bric-a-brac that often clogs up historical fiction, but you feel in every sentence the weight of history pressing down on and confining these women.