Author: Chew Lee Li
Ratings: 2.5 / 5
Conclusion:A good toilet read
Year published: 2006
Publisher: OAK Publications
Synopsis
Becoming a housewife is the best job position that any woman can aspire to! Why should a woman work to support herself when she can get a man to do it for her? Yes, it’s true. Housewifery comes with fantastic priviledges! You’ve always suspected it and now you can read all about it for yourself. The novel “The Mad Housewife Diary” by new novelist Chew Lee Li reveals the cushy rewards of housewife life. In this book, our heroine Andie Ang Poh Choo:
- Is married to a filthy-rich banker
- Has the ideal number of offspring
- Lives in a humongous apartment in a swanky part of town
- Drives a Jag
- Hardly has to lift a finger to do any housework
- And spends her days having lunch and tea with her friends
What’s a woman to do when her life is already so picture-perfect? But dark clouds loom in Andie’s paradise. When The First Singapore Bank merges with Heng Heng Bank, Andie’s conscientious husband may get the sack! What will happen to our pampered heroine and her precious family? Will Andie survive this devastating crisis?
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My take on The Mad Housewife Diary
In all honesty, I picked this book up randomly and I thought that as a writer, I should lend my support to local or Asian writers. Chew Lee Li is NOW Singaporean (a Malaysian Johorian before marriage) and I think I should do everything I can to support women writers, so….I bought the book from MPH and hoped to find surprising housewifery details in there that I don’t know of.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting from this book. Despite the fact that the concept of writing about an Asian housewife is interesting and quite fresh (as opposed to the many who write about either Asian career girls and Asian young adults in love), sadly, I didn’t bite the bait. There’s simply nothing interesting or surprising in the book. There’s nothing to laugh about. Nothing to connect with and I didn’t even feel remotely sympathetic about the heroine at all. The style of writing is fine…it’s short, it’s sweet and slightly Asian but there’s an element of surprise and content that is simply missing.
Life as a housewife of a rich husband just doesn’t cut it for me. There was nothing to look forward to and I had to simply force myself to read it in the toilet.
Andie, the heroine loved expensive China (which most of us cannot afford to), drive a fine car (which most of us don’t), have a filthy-rich husband (which I most certainly do not), love plants (which most of us don’t have the time for), attends swanky dinners and galas (which most of us don’t)….as you can see, we can’t connect much with the heroine because she’s simply way yonder over there and we’re way over here….down here. But Andie had a son who was terrible at mandarin which I think most of us can connect with – either mandarin or some other subjects. Either way, that’s the only thing that made her feel remotely real to me.
Or maybe there’s another thing. The fact that there’s a possibility of her husband being sacked was a good idea too. Most of us live in fear of being out of a job, so, that’s another reality in the book.
Other than that, it’s like reading a book on alien farm lands. Hard to connect with.
Marsha, good of you to support local (or ex-Msian) writers. Browsed through the book at the bookstore but wasn’t tempted to buy it.
Question : do readers like to read of lives that are very different from theirs as a form of escapism or do they want something they could identify with?
Lydia, aaahhhh….another writer. Is your book published already? Promise to write nothing but good stuff….but only if you give me an autographed copy. hee hee hee…..erm…as for your question….a little bit of both, I suppose. it depends on the reason why we picked the book up in the first place. for instance, if it’s fiction…like say John Grisham or something like that, we want escapism. i am not expecting to find myself relating to a character in any of the fiction or mystery books, you see. I want to be intrigued by their lifestyle, the things they do, be surprised and learn something new.
but if i picked up a book about malaysian life or diary or a chick lit, i would probably expect to connect with at least ONE of the characters to get me going. like if it’s writing about a mother of kids, i would expect her to AT LEAST go through some of the things that I do everyday…like mopping and having trouble with the kids.
I know it’s hard to find the balance but that’s the kind of balance that very few writers can achieve. and people think it’s easy being a writer hor?
Marsha, good point. I shall bear that in mind in my future books. Fiction – can go crazy with the plot and characters, non-fiction Msian – give them something they can identify with. Eh, in that case, Honk! If You’re Malaysian will be up your alley. Free book – show me the review first, then I’ll show you the book, oops error in logic. Silly me!
Lydia ha ha ha ha ha!!! Writer’s block??