Reviews for Neighbourhood tales

The average rating for Neighbourhood tales based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-04 00:00:00 Cheryl Mccleery A couple of years ago when I started my journey reading Indonesian literature, I came across a book by Dewi Anggraeni called Root of All Evil. It was horrible, a cheap story about adultery. So why would I give this author another chance? Well, for some reason my library got another book from her and it's a bilingual compilation of her short stories. Half of the book is in English and the author half in Indonesian. From my understanding, everything was written and translated by the author herself. I thought it would be a good practice for my reading in Indonesian to immediately have the translation available and double check if I understood the story correctly. A quick story-by-story rating: - Komposisi buat Libreto (1/5): cheap, adulterous story which the author seems to have a penchant for. - Gubuk (3.5/5): suspenseful story about the haunting legacy of colonialism. - Santet (4/5): my favorite story out of the bunch. An Australian teacher is confronted with the superstition locals have on black magic. - Halal (3/5): predictable short story. - Kutukan (2.5/5): very sad story about a domestic helper. - Indra Tanpa Batas (3.5/5): story about synesthesia, which is mistaken for power. - Tergelincir Dalam Cobaan (2/5): Australian husband who is cheated on by Indonesian wife. - Undang-undang Perkawinan (2/5): Australian husband who is beaten up by Indonesian wife. - Lembah Kesedihan (3.5/5): my second favorite story. A depressed, middle-aged woman seeks comfort in Buddhism and gets into a fatal accident. Is it all an illusion? - Keris Pusaka (3/5): suspenseful ghost story. - Gajah-gajah (2/5): similar story to Gubuk. Colonialism and ghosts. - Ya Mustafa (2.5/5): weird story about a belly-dancer who finds out who her real father is. What I found annoying is that most stories involve an Indonesian woman and a western man. Not a single story included a different dynamic (western woman and Indonesian man). Also, it felt to me that the author wanted to shatter the weak, obedient Asian woman image. The cheapness of her previous book kind of seeped through in this collection, but it wasn't as bad as Root of All Evil. I'm at least glad that the author addressed various themes in this short story collection - ghost stories, colonialism, domestic problems, black magic, superstition...

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-03 00:00:00 Ronald Brenner All of the short stories are really splendid and recommended to people who loves to explore about culture, country and custom. The short story I like most is titled 'Halal'. The author stresses people can't be judged by looking their appearances, hence we might make mistake in evaluating and making assumption.