The Interpreter's Daughter by Teresa Lim (Pegasus Books)

When Teresa Lim began to investigate her family history, she thought the primary figure would be her great-grandfather, a man who emigrated from China to Singapore when he was young and the British still controlled their island colony. Known to his descendants simply as Law, Law Foong-Siew’s father made sure that he and his sons paid for their tickets to Singapore themselves. Although this put them in debt to relatives, that was preferable to having a future employer pay for their passage and ensuring them to a life of indentured servitude, working as coolies to pay off a never-ending debt.

Law had two other advantages working in his favor. He had received an education and he had a flair for languages. Immediately embarking on English classes that were almost free, Law stood out among his fellow students who were almost all without education or an aptitude for learning English. He eventually became part of the colonial bureaucracy, an interpreter for British officials and a member of the Chinese Protectorate. Even though he abandoned the life of officialdom when the pay proved to be insufficient to support his wife and children, the prestige of that post carried him into a successful business career.

Long before Lim began to excavate Law’s history, when she was a little girl she asked her mother if their family had a tragedy befall them when the Japanese occupied Singapore during World War Two. Yes, her mother said, it happened to her aunt. No more was said and Lim forgot about this until she saw this woman in family photos.

Fanny Law was Law’s youngest child, much younger than her sisters and brothers, and she seemed to have been erased from the family history. Nobody wanted to talk about her and it took Lim huge amounts of painstaking research to discover who her great-aunt was and why she had become a non-entity in her family.

Fanny was her father’s favorite, the one who remained with him after her older sisters had married and her brothers pursued their careers. Law made certain she was educated, first by her oldest brother who steeped her in Confucian thought and codes of duty, then at an elite girl’s school where Fanny excelled. She was a brilliant scholar, one of the few Singapore to be accepted at the University of Hong Kong.

But before any of this took place, Fanny persuaded Law to allow her to take the vows of a “sworn spinster.” She had seen how one sister died within her marriage while the other left her husband when he insisted on having a concubine and was now, with her young children, dependent upon her father for shelter, food, and economic support. Fanny was determined to remain single and eventually persuaded her father to agree. Standing before the family altar with guests in attendance, she vowed to live a life of independence and celibacy, setting up her own household and taking on full support for her sister and her sister’s children. In return, her father ensured that Fanny would receive an education in English.

By the time she was 26, Fanny had a teaching position in Singapore, had her own house, and was the sole support of her sister, niece, and nephew. She had a brief period at the University of Hong Kong, failing her examination in English at the end of her first year, but that was enough to launch her teaching career.

But World War Two was brewing, boiling over when the Japanese invade China and move onward to take North Vietnam. From there they have a clear path into Southeast Asia and Singapore, supposedly impregnable, becomes a target for Japanese bombers. “Singapore won’t fall,” Winston Churchill proclaims after the British lose Penang, but once Malaysia is invaded, Singapore is doomed.

The conquering Japanese have around 30, 000 troops to control more than 300,000 Singaporean Chinese men. They single out those whom they discover are leaders and they execute them. One of these men is Fanny’s oldest brother and Fanny reverts to the Confucian ideals that he had taught her. The decision she makes is enough to eradicate her memory—until her great-niece uncovers her story.

“I wish I had known Fanny,” Lim says but discovers that without her great-aunt’s fateful decision, Lim herself would never have existed. Lim’s mother had been given to Fanny with the understanding that she too would become a sworn spinster. But while Fanny’s adopted daughter couldn’t keep her aunt’s memory alive, her own daughter becomes the one to return her to the family history.

The Interpreter’s Daughter takes on too much and this sinks it. A biography mingled with a detailed family history and the writer’s personal memoir, along with a concise account of the opening years of World War Two would be a substantial weight for any book. The crushing addition comes when Lim embroiders upon a brief sentence spoken by her mother. When Lim asks about the conclusion to Fanny’s education, her mother tells her, “There was a young man.” From that Lim invents a romance between Fanny and a family friend, with stilted conversation and a melodramatic conclusion. Since this is the only attempt at a novelization of Fanny’s life, it falls flat and diminishes Lim’s careful research.

Even with this flaw, the Law family history and the woman who honored all who came before her is a remarkable record of how rapidly the world has changed in such a dazzlingly short time. Fanny Law was a woman born too soon and paid the price for that accident of birth.~Janet Brown