Handpicked
Author: Siew Siang Tay
Published by: Fourth Estate

I was quite disappointed when I finished this novel. It hadn’t been the nuanced work of social observation I’d expected from a book whose cover shouts that it’s a Varuna Awards winner.

When we see a book with that giant sticker on the front, we bring to it certain preconceptions that it’s not only good but self-consciously literary as well, because the author has been snuggled away in the Blue Mountains undergoing a rigorous manuscript-honing and editing process, having been selected from hundreds of other applications – handpicked, if you will.

But let’s not be sentimental. Varuna, the Writers’ House is an industry machine designed to make business connections between writers and publishers. HarperCollins uses its Varuna Awards to scout for talent (without being obliged to sign anyone) and to market certain books as ‘literature’ rather than ‘fiction’, thus putting them in the purview of readers who are into awards, writers’ festivals and other ‘literary events’.

However, you’ll get much more from Handpicked if you think of it as middlebrow romance or cross-cultural chick-lit. The dialogue is kinda clunky, some characters are cartoonishly rendered, the plot gets quite soapy from about halfway in and the ending is predictable. As Lachlan Jobbins wrote in Australian Bookseller and Publisher, “Handpicked will appeal to readers of love stories and tales of hardship, particularly women, and it should do well in libraries.”

Its perspective, however, is fresh – I’m not sure there’s been much writing about the experiences of an Asian mail-order bride. The protagonist, Laila, is an Iban girl from Sarawak, Malaysia. Chafing at the smallness of life in her family’s village longhouse, she enters into a correspondence with Jim, a fruit-picker from Renmark, South Australia. Against her father’s wishes (and a mean bastard he is, too), Laila travels to Australia to become Jim’s wife.

But both she and Jim have unrealistic ideas of what marriage will involve. In chapters told from both Laila’s and Jim’s perspectives, we see Laila struggle amid the strangeness of Australian culture and adjust to living in a caravan in a country town with an unambitious dropkick. Meanwhile, Jim is filled with puzzled longing and struggles to understand why Laila is so unhappy and frustrated. When Laila meets the cultured and well-dressed Sean, the astute reader can guess what happens next.

Within this largely predictable narrative, Handpicked excels in its observation of details. Tay herself is a Malaysian immigrant who moved to Adelaide in 1992 with her daughter, and she deftly sketches Laila’s frustration at a recorded phone menu system, unfamiliar foods and drinks, and the vernacular phrases her classroom English hasn’t prepared her for. There’s also a strong sense of the magic and luxury to Laila of even the most everyday things: upside-down glasses in a bar, non-stick frying pans, hot showers and cut flowers. Material possessions turn out to be extremely important to Laila – important enough to blind her to the true nature of their owners.

There are also evocative descriptions of landscapes: from the lush, steamy Rejang River to the cool, blue-grey Murray; bitingly cold Australian winters and country sunsets; chaotic markets and quiet, sunlit gardens. These little moments, captured almost photographically, are what lifts Handpicked above the cheesiness of its plot. It’s by no means a stunning debut, but Handpicked displays an original enough voice to suggest Tay is a writer to watch.