Jackson has used her memories of growing up on a military base in Singapore in the 1970s as a springboard into these 25 short stories. All are set in Singapore with a timeframe from then up until the pandemic. Well-known landmarks such as Raffles Hotel appear.
The stories are quite short and easily digestible, and are often triggered by actual events, such the escape of Congo, the hippopotamus from Singapore Zoo in the first story, ‘The Hippo Project’.
The military base was built by the British and carries its Britishness boldly. The street on which she grew up was called The Oval and that location features in a number of stories. Other British traits also feature, notably distinctions made on the basis of class and race. Amahs – maids employed by wealthier families – are falsely accused of theft (‘Ping’s Ring) and/or subjected to sexual exploitation (‘The Toffee Tin’). In both instances there are surprising twists in which the amah is able to gain some revenge, but the latter story highlights one misgiving I have.
The occasional sex scenes are written coyly. In most circumstances this is merely quaint, but the rape of Chen, the amah, feels dispassionate, as the story moves quickly past that, solely focused on the story’s pay-off. Chen deserved better. Each narrative is neatly parcelled – perhaps too tidily in some cases – with the resultant denouement feeling anticlimactic.
Despite this, the stories in One Degree Off offer an outsider’s view of Singapore and will delight those who have, like Jackson, spent quality time there.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Penelope Jackson MNZM is a New Zealand based art historian and curator.
Over the past decade she has published three books with the common theme of art crime. They are Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: The New Zealand Story (2016), Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime (2019), and The Art of Copying Art (2022).
Penelope has also curated exhibitions including the award-winning Corrugations: The Art of Jeff Thomson (2013-5), three exhibitions about the life and work of children’s book writer and illustrator, Dame Lynley Dodd, as well as An Empty Frame: Crimes of Art in New Zealand (2016-17). A former curator and director of Tauranga Art Gallery, she was a founding member of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust of which she is now Chair. In 2020 she was a recipient of the University of Auckland Michael King Writers Centre residency. In 2023, Penelope became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to art crime research and visual arts.
Her book, The Art of Copying Art, won Best Book in the 2023 Art Writing and Publishing Awards. Jackson is an Adjunct Research Associate of Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.
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