Review
Now That It’s Over
2016
Epigram Books
Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #9 (June 2017).
This novel shows a rather different O Thiam Chin from the experimental collection Under the Sun which impressed me with its diversity of subject matter, including short ventures into genre. Now That It’s Over, which took four years to write, goes from O’s native Singapore to Phuket in Thailand following two couples who are holidaying, having arrived just in time for the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that kills one of the four people. It traces the extent the survivors go through to find one another, and the grief and remorse they experience in finding resolution and closure. I’d have liked to see more use of foreshadowing, and the four points of view, both before and after the event and seemingly randomly sequenced, turn the novel into something of a jigsaw at times. But the tsunami and the Thai people (or are they in fact spirits?) that we encounter make a good backdrop for the drama, We have four people unexpectedly cut adrift by nature while trying to piece it together again, and the fate of Ai Ling, who still has a presence in the book beyond her death, is described with equanimity and prevents the book from becoming too sentimental. Now That It’s Over is a successful slowburner.
