unbearably simple, surprisingly dark
February 8, 2010
This is probably my most liked Indonesian book so far. It has everything I expect it to be. It’s short and simple, it doesn’t use any complex language, just fairly simple phrases and locutions, yet it’s brilliantly surprising and sometimes inspiring. I was smitten by the depth of some of the short stories the author wrote. One thing that blew me away was how immaculate the author has managed to gracefully weave simple Indonesian words together in her stories which makes them unbelievably straightforward, easy to understand, yet still succeed leaving scrumptiously dark after-taste after I finished each story as my lagniappe. In short, the book has successfully exalted the position of Indonesian language in my eyes. However as always happens in short-story compilation books, there are some good stories and some bad stories in it. We’ll just have to pick some and rid the others.
