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Catherine Lim by Kate Mayberry |
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| Catherine Lim has just published her thirteenth book, The Teardrop Story Woman, and her life has become a whirlwind of publicity and media. She slotted our meeting ahead of a dinnerengagement. "I find it's better Color if I work backwards," she told me. "I have an appointment at seven thirty. I need 15 minutes to get ready, so if you come at six fifteen, that'll give us plenty of time to talk." |
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The novelist was already ready when I rang the doorbell; hair done, make-up perfect and dressed in her signature cheongsam. "Let's go into my son's bedroom," she said, "It's air-conditioned."
In common with her previous books, The Teardrop Story Woman is set in Singapore and Malaysia and deals with a woman battling against societies odds to make a success of her life. The heroine of her previous work,
The Bondmaid, was another strong woman. Sold as a child into a wealthy and powerful Chinese family, the heroine is thwarted in her passion for the family heir. But she's proud, beautiful and determined to get what she wants. I ask Catherine whether there's any of herself in the heroines she creates. |
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"I suppose so," she says thoughtfully. "At least people say I must be pretty strong to get out of my marriage, my religion, to get out of my job. Walking away from structures which define women I call it, so that must have been very daring."
Many of the characters in Catherine's books are based on childhood memories, people she met and stories she heard while growing up in Kedah, Malaysia. When writing she rarely goes out and does research,preferring to rely on the details in her head. "If it needs to be copied onto paper, it probably isn't powerful enough but if I remember it, it must have that strength, that colour," she says. "Memory to me is the best storehouse for everything." |
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In 1995 Catherine published The Bondmaid on her own after Heinemann, the publisher she normally worked with tried to cut sections of the novel it felt were overly explicit. The writer was determined to publish the book on her own terms and in its entirety and even turned down offers from other publishers.Like many authors Lim writes to please herself, highlighting events and ideas of significance to her. It's an added bonus so many people find her world as fascinating as she does. And as for her favourite book, "When people ask me that," she laughs, "I come out with the most outrageous answer. I say it's the one about to be written. It's my favourite in the sense that I give it the most attention. It excites me most." The book is called 'Following the Wrong God Home', and should be finished by the end of the year, if Lim gets a chance to work on it amid her current whirl of frenzied appointments.
The phone rings, about the fifth time in the course of the discussion, and Catherine rushes out of the room. She's visibly excited when she returns, not by the phone call but by a fax. It's from Orion telling her The Teardrop Story Woman reached number nine in The Guardian's bestseller list ,just two short weeks after its launch. It seems there won't be many windows in Catherine Lim's diary for sometime to come. End |
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