Reading Time: 3 minutes
By Faith Wan (23S02B)
Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.
Rating: 4/5
“Don’t let them get away with it.”
Set in 1930s British Malaya, award-winning children’s novelist Eva Wong Nava’s The House of Little Sisters is an immersive work of historical fiction. It centres on our protagonist, Ah Mei, a 16 year-old girl who has been sold to the wealthy Lee family as a mui tsai, or unpaid domestic servant, and is tasked with taking care of Precious Jade, the family’s youngest daughter.
From the first chapter, Wong Nava establishes palpable unease and tension. The Lee family seems to be hiding a secret so grievous even Ah Wan Jie, the head mui tsai of the family, skirts cagily around any mention of it. In addition, Ah Mei starts to see visions of a certain spirit, who pleads with her to “take action”—though against what exactly is a revelation only uncovered later in the book.
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