The Interpreter’s Daughter: A Family Memoir

Journalist Lim debuts with a captivating family history focused on her great-aunt, Fanny Law. Lim begins by detailing her feelings of displacement after leaving Singapore for Britain in 1992, which led her to research the life of her great-grandfather Law Quan-Yee, who was displaced by famine from his native Canton to the British colony of Singapore in the 1890s, where he became a clerk and interpreter for the Chinese Protectorate. The focus then shifts to Lim’s grandmother, Mong-Han, and her sister Mong-Fan, who Anglicized her name as Fanny Law. Caught in a collision between Chinese tradition and Western modernity, Fanny took a vow of celibacy and devoted her life to education and to caring for her family. As a teacher, she supported Mong-Han and her children through the Great Depression and Law Quan-Yee’s death. In gratitude, Mong-Han expected her daughter Violet, Lim’s mother, to become a “sworn spinster” like her aunt, but Fanny’s tragic death during the Japanese occupation of Singapore set Violet on a different path. Lim vividly recreates Singapore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and lucidly explains historical matters (the 1927 Shanghai massacre) and cultural traditions (spirit tablets). Fans of Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain ought to take a look. (Sept.)