Rediscovery

One of the pleasures of being in KL is that it puts me in touch with some of the books for children I purchased in the middle-eighties, before coming to Singapore. I shipped these over only when I had the storage space, with the house here and lack of contact with them has led to an odd combination of almost familiarity mixed with the distinctly strange. Yesterday I read Jan Marks’s tasty collection of short stories Nothing To Be Afraid Of and found a story that I’ve vaguely recalled over the years in Singapore in situations when students are being pulled every which way regarding different activities they are forced to attend and just don’t know what to do about it. But until yesterday I’d forgotten who wrote the tale and quite how it dealt with the situation.

The story in question is entitled The Choice is Yours and, as I realised when I first read it, it’s a gem. It’s strength lies partly in the utter believability of the absurd situation in which the protagonist finds herself – needing to attend at one and the same time her regular choir practice and an unscheduled but vital training session for the school’s hockey team – but mainly in the devastatingly acid portraits of the teachers involved. Each of them is good at what she does, and knows it. Each is using the situation to put on a kind of performance for the rest of the students dutifully assembled to do the right thing. Each is completely callous, ensuring that the full responsibility for attempting to reconcile an impossible situation falls on the shoulders of the weakest person in the power struggle being played out.

Jan Mark makes you detest both and yet see just how common such types are in a school. Unnervingly she makes you realise (if you’re a teacher) that you just might be one of them. I suppose that’s what makes a genuine horror story.