{"id":235,"date":"2004-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T23:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushlamckinney.wordpress.com\/?p=235"},"modified":"2025-01-02T11:47:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T22:47:45","slug":"behind-the-moon-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2004\/10\/05\/behind-the-moon-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Hsu Ming Teo<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Allen &amp; Unwin<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, October 5th 2004<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The first thing that struck me about Hsu-Ming Teo\u2019s <em>Behind the Moon<\/em> was the sheer beauty of her writing, and the best encapsulation of the book\u2019s thematic centre is from her own words.&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>\u201cWhat were the overlaps that kept human beings adjacent and anchoured to your life?\u201d<\/em> asks one of her characters \u201c<em>How was it that some people managed to manacle others to their lives&#8230;whereas others found friendship as weak as water, sparkling and slipping away through cupped fingers, leaving only the impression of wetness and a thirst uquenched?\u201d&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Tien Ho, Justin Cheong and Nigel \u201cGibbo\u201d Gibson\u2019s friendship begins at primary school, forged by their social exclusion in an Australian society firmly divided into ethnic strata.\u00a0\u00a0 Tien, a Vietnemese refugee, and the Singaporean Justin are both determined to escape their backgrounds and just be Australian, while Gibbo, the quintessential fat-boy outcast, yearns to be Asian so that he has a community to belong to.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Forced together by difference rather than similarity, they each retain their secrets.\u00a0 Tien is caught in a battle with her mother (of whom she is ashamed) over their differing expectations of maternal and filial duty.\u00a0 Justin struggles with the shame of being gay and Asian, a minority within a minority.\u00a0 Gibbo desperately wants to be loved, but is forced to watch silently as Tien and Justin gravitate towards each other by a shared cultural heritage, unintentionally leaving him yet again an outsider.\u00a0 Like so many childhood friendships, theirs begins to founder as they reach adolescence, when a volatile emotional mix\u00a0 of jealousy and misunderstanding strains the ties between them.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">An accidental meeting between Justin\u2019s mother, Annabel, and Gibbo\u2019s mother, Gillian, results in a reunion of the three families (to watch Lady Dianna\u2019s funeral-a Dead Dianna Dinner), at which things are said that might best have been left unspoken.\u00a0 The resulting conflict shatters the few remaining strands connecting them, and forces each of them to re-evaluate the nature of friendship and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Teo\u2019s use of language and imagery is both original and striking, crystalising into instants with a tangibility and immediacy more often found in poetry than prose.&nbsp;&nbsp; She does not than provide easy answers to the complex questions the narrative raises, creating a work that is thought provoking and intellectually satisfying.&nbsp; And anybody brave enough start a novel \u201c<em>Justin Cheong believed in the truth that was to be found in toilets.\u201d<\/em> has to be worth a second look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hsu Ming Teo <br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review October 5th 2004<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,370,15,18],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-7","tag-fiction","tag-hsu-ming-teo","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1979,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/1979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}