SL LIM Revenge: Murder in Three Parts. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Following her first novel Real Differences, SL Lim explores the weight of family obligations and betrayals in her second, Revenge.
The three parts of this ‘Murder’ appear to be the Prologue ‘The Demon Brother’; 11 chapters culminating in one titled ‘Revenge’; and an Epilogue, ‘Letters from Kat’ (Kat is the demon brother’s daughter).
And it does take Yannie a long time to take revenge on her demon brother. Meanwhile, because SL Lim draws us into Yannie’s life in her Asian home and charts her interactions with family and friends so effectively, we get to know and like her, and to understand her feelings, especially her resilience.
Yannie is 11 when we first meet her and she is small. Her brother Shan is four years older, bigger and stronger, and a bully. ‘Natural cold-blooded killer,’ thinks Yannie after he has pinned her to a wall and almost throttled her. She has learned that her mother will be dismissive if she tells her of Shan’s violent attacks, saying, ‘He’s always hated that you are better at maths than him’; or laughing about it with a friend, ‘Did I tell you about Yannie’s brush with death yesterday?’ So Yannie arms herself with a sharp paperknife she finds in a drawer:
Sometimes she imagines how it would feel to wield it as a weapon. Pressure at the point of contact, piercing the skin; the sick texture of flesh giving way.
She knows she’ll never do it. But why?
At school, Yannie is clever and popular with her classmates and her teachers. When she isn’t studying, she reads voraciously. One elderly teacher tells her she ‘will go far’, but Yannie knows that her parents are poor, and if she shows her cleverness at home they are dismissive, so she has learned to play dumb.
Yannie’s mother is unpredictable – sometimes gentle and kind, at other times she is violent and will give Yannie ‘a crack across the face’ if Yannie annoys her. ‘Things don’t make sense when an object can change shape like that,’ thinks Yannie. ‘A car turns into an elephant. An elephant turns into a car.’ Her father will not get involved, and incidents with her brother continue. ‘He is family,’ her father tells her. ‘We need each other, Yannie. As a family we must stick together.’ What Yannie does not understand is why Shan’s friends do not see the vicious side of him.
Lim skilfully captures Yannie’s childish incomprehension and puzzlement, but as she grows older it is clear to her that Shan is favoured. Money is found for his education, but when Yannie’s own exam results come through and she is offered a place at the National University:
… there is no wild excitement at home, no celebrations the way there were when her brother qualified. The first child of the family to attend university is a triumph. The second is just anticlimax. This suits her just fine; she’s not interested in anything as vaporous as praise. All she wants is cold hard cash, so she can flee this family, this city life.
Yannie’s father explains that there is no money to pay for her university study, yet Yannie is not unhappy. She has been helping her father in the family shop for some time and has got to know him better. He is impressed when she explains how to adjust profits for inflation. She reorganises the shelves so that attractive items are at eye level. She recognises regular customers and remembers their names. People have heard of her exam success and praise her for it. And all this improves the family finances.
When she discovers that her father has used the business as collateral for a loan in order to send her brother to England to study law at Oxford University, she is furious. She challenges her father: ‘Why did you lie to me?’ she demands. ‘Why did you tell me there wasn’t any money?’ He blusters:
‘Oh Yannie dear, I’m sorry, I really am. But there was no other choice. And it’s such an opportunity for your brother. I know the two of you are like cats and dogs, but remember, he’s still your family. A good thing for him is a good thing for all of us.’
‘But what about me?’ Immediately after having spoken Yannie is sickeningly conscious of all the people, through history, who have uttered these words, usually to no effect. ‘Aren’t I part of this family? Why does he get his chance, two chances, and I get none? What about my opportunities?’
But it makes no difference. So begin ‘long years of waiting. Entropy.’ Meanwhile, other things have happened in Yannie’s life. At school she formed a friendship with Shuying. She finds herself dreaming of her and knows she loves her. But after a brief, unexpected moment of shared passion, Shuying distances herself and becomes close to a local boy. Yannie’s sadness is ‘absolute’ and she can see how it will end:
Eventually Shuying will find someone who’s ‘husband material’, as Yannie’s mother says… Someone who is a provider… She and Yannie will see each other now and then; they’ll be friendly, but the walls will come down, the way they do around married people.
Yannie’s mother also sees ‘husband material’ in one of Shan’s friends and encourages Yannie to consider a relationship with him. Jan is ‘a nice boy’, ‘He likes you,’ her mother says. Jan is friendly, responsible and honest, but his appearance on her doorstep fills Yannie with ‘a faint sense of dismay’. Time passes. Shuying does marry. Jan, too, gets married, but not to Yannie, although after his wife dies he visits her more and more often. Yannie’s complex and changing relationships with both these friends become a large part of her story.
Yannie’s brother completes his law course, marries a Malaysian girl whose family ‘is rich’, and moves to Sydney, where, as Jan tells her, he ‘does well for himself’ and is interviewed on YouTube. Jan shows Yannie the interview and there is her brother’s face on the screen: ‘all the flesh and blood and hatred of him. Exactly the same as he was, and yet still different.’ Yannie wants to giggle at his bright blue tie and ‘stupid clothes’: ‘What is a jealous child doing all dressed up like an adult?’ She remembers his fingers indenting her throat, how he exulted in his power over her, remembers all the things she has given up, and thinks how different their lives are, and she wants to howl. ‘Before I go to my grave,’ she says out loud, ‘I will kill that man.’
Yet, after her father’s death, Yannie becomes closer to her mother and is surprised one day to find herself defending Shan:
‘Your brother is a no-hoper,’ her mother says one day, apropos of nothing. ‘We can’t rely on him for anything.’ ….
‘I heard he came back for a visit. He stayed less than five kilometres away … Didn’t even tell us he was coming. I only heard about it from Auntie Eichoo. Didn’t even bother to come for a visit.’
‘He’s not that bad,’ Yannie says, mildly amazed at her own generosity. As far as she’s concerned, this is totally untruthful: her brother is in every way ‘that bad’ and possibly worse.
When Yannie’s parents die, Shan manages to acquire all their assets. Yannie, however, has saved enough money to rent an apartment, and when an uncle tells her that ‘private tuition’ is ‘where the gold mine is’, she begins by tutoring ‘her aunt’s son’s friend’ and soon has a thriving business. There is never reliable money, but occasionally parents decide to give her a bonus as a reward for their offspring’s good exam results. After a number of years she can afford to buy an apartment. And she can afford to fly to Sydney to visit her brother.
So begins a new way of life for Yannie. Shan’s wife Evelyn gets on well with her, so, too, does their teenage daughter, Kat, who Yannie is tutoring. Eventually, Yannie is invited to live with them, and for a while it looks as if she will get her revenge by turning Evelyn and Kat against Shan, whose suppressed violence is still evident in his responses to his family, and whose underhand and illegal business dealings Yannie finally discovers and reveals. But this is not how things turn out. Yannie does get her revenge, but in an unexpected and unplanned way.
The Epilogue of the book is different in style and in mood. Kat’s letters to Yannie, written from school in England and presented in the book in bold type, are full of typical teenage exaggeration: ‘Everyone is mega stressed out’, ‘Ughh, I am so *tired* of this shit. There’s a billion assessments’, but they also convey scraps of news and show Kat’s continuing love for Yannie. Yannie’s own thoughts and dreams are presented in italics: ‘This is a memory play. It is not realistic. It is sentimental and dimly lit. It –’ And interwoven with these is the story of Yannie’s life after her revenge.
This is SL Lim’s second published novel (the first was Real Differences, reviewed here) and, as a writer, she has grown in confidence and skill. Revenge deals less with broad social issues and more closely with family interactions and the ways in which one person reacts to life’s challenges. Lim tells a good story and she tells it fluently and well.
SL Lim Revenge: Murder in Three Parts Transit Lounge 2020 PB 240pp $29.99
Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (//ann.skea.com/) are archived by the British Library.
You can buy Revenge: A murder in three parts from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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