The Bondmaid – Catherine Lim
Set in Singapore in the fifties, the novel focuses on the story of Han.
Sold into servitude at age of four by her own mother the House of Wu and treated harshly by fellow bondmaids, Han forms a bond with Wu, who is the heir of the household.
Their friendship becomes doomed love when Wu moves to the United States, and Han find herself stuck with jealous bondmaids and Wu’s relatives in Singapore. Both face additional trials until Han’s death. The book ends when Wu and Han’s son enters the household.
30 stories about ordinary Singaporeans at their best and worst, their joys and griefs and angers, their dreams fulfilled or lost. They are tales about the awesome human condition and the even more awesome human spirit, interweaved with the author’s vignettes of her nearly 50 years in Singapore, such as how she came from Malaysia to live in Singapore and her run-in with then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
Memories and Such 