Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe

Many of the other stories in the collection also end in abrupt climaxes. By sandwiching the full story, 'Love is No Big Truth' ( an earlier version of which was published on Cha), between the two parts of the maid's tale, Koe is able to introduce a time lapse in the woman's story and build up a sense of irresolution and suspense before shocking the reader with a twist at the grand finale. The experimentation in this last example is particularly impressive. She is keen on experimenting, often effectively, with the fragmentation of narrative in various forms-be it a cluster of half-factual, half-imaginative diary entries giving insight into the life of a historical figure ('Fourteen Entries from the Diary of Maria Hertogh') an imaginary interview transcript about the tragedy of a lesbian couple ('The Ballad of Arlene and Nelly') or a split two-part story of an Indonesian maid's search for love, which bracket a third, wholly unrelated story ('Two Ways to Do This').

What Koe does particularly well is to use creative, non-linear narratives to expose precise amounts of information about her characters.

Considering the quality of its work, to many readers it came as no surprise that the collection won the biennial Singapore Literature Prize 2014 in the English Fiction category. The stories in Amanda Lee Koe's marvelous prize-winning debut collection, The Ministry of Moral Panic, are perfect examples of Gordimer's comment, and Koe's mastery of the short story form ensures that the flash gets to shine at its brightest. In an essay titled 'The Flash of the Fireflies,' the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer comments on the unique craft of short-story writing: If human contact is the transient flash of fireflies, then 'hort story writers see by the light of the flash theirs is the art of the only thing one can be pure of-the present moment.' Thrilling Panic Attacks: Amanda Lee Koe's The Ministry of Moral PanicĪmanda Lee Koe, Ministry of Moral Panic, Epigram Books, 2013.

Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe