The Catherine Lim Collection

This book consists of three celebrated short story collections and an early novel, each reflecting Lim's prowess as a storyteller chronicling a society in transit, where multiethnic characters struggle with their identities as the past and the present intersect, mingle and clash. The Serpent's Tooth (1982) : Within each family lie the proverbial skeletons better left untouched, lest the truths uncovered become to horrifying. The Serpent's Tooth is fraught with dashed hopes and wasted efforts, where characters grope around desperately in the murky depths of self delusion, where hands reach beyond the grave and resurface to haunt. They Do Return...but gently lead them back (1983): 15 tales of the paranormal. Unlike the bloodthirsty, melodramatic tales favoured at gatherings, the substance of these are commonplace, stories behind the ghost stories: of relationships that death cannot sever; of personalities so forceful they invade the land of the living after death; of rituals and...