A good review of my book. Thanks to http://carolesbooks.blogspot.co.uk

Saturday, 16 February 2013Book Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE BY AMANDA SINGTON-WILLIAMS
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2010 by Sparkling Books
Source: Author

About the Book:

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya.
Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school.
Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out.

We first meet George, travelling home on the tube, after his meeting with his boss where he learns of his ‘promotion’ to Malaya. Both he and his wife know it’s anything but a promotion.
His wife Dorothy feels powerless to do anything but go with him as she feared being frowned upon and shunned by other people if she divorced George. “The alternative to divorce, thought Dorothy, was to grit her teeth and depart for Malaya.”
She hates Malaya and they are both bored, Dorothy starts to fantasise about having an affair and their relationship is tested by other people and the frightening Communist threat to their lives.
Each chapter is written from a different person’s perspective and I thought this gave an added dimension to the story. The chapters also moved the story along so I was made to really think about what must have happened as the author quite often just gave clues and it was left to me to work it out, most of the time this worked okay.
Overall, I did like this style of writing, it flowed very easily. The descriptions of Malaya and the people seemed real and believable and I could easily picture them.
I enjoyed this story and would happily read another book by Amanda Sington-Williams

Saturday, 16 February 2013Book Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE BY AMANDA SINGTON-WILLIAMS
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2010 by Sparkling Books
Source: Author

About the Book:

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya.
Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school.
Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out.

We first meet George, travelling home on the tube, after his meeting with his boss where he learns of his ‘promotion’ to Malaya. Both he and his wife know it’s anything but a promotion.
His wife Dorothy feels powerless to do anything but go with him as she feared being frowned upon and shunned by other people if she divorced George. “The alternative to divorce, thought Dorothy, was to grit her teeth and depart for Malaya.”
She hates Malaya and they are both bored, Dorothy starts to fantasise about having an affair and their relationship is tested by other people and the frightening Communist threat to their lives.
Each chapter is written from a different person’s perspective and I thought this gave an added dimension to the story. The chapters also moved the story along so I was made to really think about what must have happened as the author quite often just gave clues and it was left to me to work it out, most of the time this worked okay.
Overall, I did like this style of writing, it flowed very easily. The descriptions of Malaya and the people seemed real and believable and I could easily picture them.
I enjoyed this story and would happily read another book by Amanda Sington-Williams

News about my published novel

It seems that my publishers have been busy selling foriegn rights for my novel, The Eloquence of Desire.  Good work for an independant publshers without the clout of the established biggies, never mind the recent giants.

My book is with agents that represent China, Tawain and Korea, Malayasia, France. And a publisher in Hungary  has shown interest.  It’s already been translated into Turkish and sold there with a different title.

I take my hat off to them. They know how to do business!

The Eloquence of Desire is talked about in ‘ex-pat news’

Tom Sykes

Gu Hongming, Arena Wati, Usman Awung, Abdullah Hussain, Tash Aw, Preeta Samarasan, Rani Manicka, Shamini Flint. The roll call says it all: over the last few decades, Malaysian fiction has well and truly arrived on the world stage. Many critics have identified its unique tropes, sentiments and imagery. But fewer critics have examined those Western novelists who have taken Malaysia – and especially its political, military and colonial history – as subject matter.

The earliest books had a fixation with piracy. G.A. Henty’s In the Hands of the Malays (1905) tells of a dashing Dutch lieutenant who escapes from the clutches of a bloodthirsty buccaneer known only as ‘The Sea Tiger’. Although he sold 25 million books in his lifetime, Henty has since been castigated for his pro-imperialist stance and racist depictions of pretty much anyone not English. By contrast, in The Tigers of Mompracem (1900) by the Italian writer…

View original post 584 more words