Book review: Wong Souk Yee’s political drama Gardens At Phoenix Park has one-dimensional characters

Gardens At Phoenix Park

By Wong Souk Yee
Fiction/Epigram Books/Paperback/270 pages/$29.05/Amazon SG (

amzn.to/3rDi61T

)
3 stars

Gardens At Phoenix Park is the story of three people who occupy different positions on the Singapore political spectrum – a minister, a member of the opposition and a political detainee.

In their youth, the trio are members of their university’s student union. A government crackdown and graduation lead them to pursue different paths.

A love story is cursorily flung into the mix of the political drama, which spans 1977 to 2020 and reunites them in unexpected ways.

For those already familiar with the 1987 Operation Spectrum, it is quite uninteresting as fiction, in certain places reading more like a blow-by-blow account of what transpired.

This is the second novel by Wong Souk Yee, author of 2016’s Death Of A Perm Sec, which tapped the actual death of former minister for national development Teh Cheang Wan in 1986.

Here, Wong’s source is more autobiographical: She was one of the 22 people detained during the 1987 Government crackdown against an alleged Marxist conspiracy, and later contested the General Election (GE) on the Singapore Democratic Party slate in 2015.

The difficulty is in resisting reading Gardens At Phoenix Park as a political memoir, as hefty chunks of the story are devoted to protagonist Min Chan’s interrogation and imprisonment at Phoenix Park, where the Internal Security Department was headquartered.

Many developments also have obvious referents in Singapore’s history – with transparent name changes – though Wong also had some fun and fictionalised certain elements.

The most outrageous of these is the 2020 GE finale, which can be described as political fantasy.

From start to finish, Wong’s protagonists run up against policies of the state everywhere they turn, from being unable to buy a Housing Board flat to their frustration at the huge sums being devoted to the building of the Esplanade arts centre.

When Min Chan returns from her self-imposed exile, a visit to VivoCity allows for an observation of Singapore’s “population explosion”.

She notes the “fancy prices” of healthcare at Novena Medical Centre and Mount Elizabeth Hospital, which are “not too high for the wealthy from neighbouring countries”.

The threesome’s relentlessly critical eye makes for one-dimensional fictional characters, particularly given that not much outside of politics has been allowed to intrude on this treatise.

Malaysia-born Martin, though, is an exception.

Entering Singapore on a scholarship, he is allowed some interesting reflections on how his education in Singapore – and his “less-is-more sensitivity, thanks to my Architecture course” – puts him increasingly at odds with his countless familial and neighbourly duties in his Mersing village.

One of the rare scenes rich in interiority is of Martin being forced to visit a brothel, only for an unexpected guest to turn up.

There are incisive descriptions of Taiwanese pop songs and Taoist traditions that, in flashes, make Martin’s home come alive in ways absent elsewhere in the text.

No doubt the pain and helplessless Min Chan feels while being detained are partially drawn from Wong’s own experience.

But if this is meant to change minds, it feels too crude as an instrument – though readers who stick with it will no doubt find themselves searching for details online and reacquainting themselves with this part of history.

A more layered exploration of the trio’s guilt, estrangement and forgiveness may have made this a more compelling offering.

Wong’s choice of being explicit may make for effective political education, but leaves readers feeling oddly detached.

If you like this, read: Catskull by Myle Yan Tay (Ethos Books, 2023, $24, 

ethosbooks.com.sg

), another experimental novel about troubled youth. Ram, a Singaporean junior college student who is struggling in school, attempts to become a vigilante after intervening in his best friend’s abuse at her father’s hands.