The Loving and the Dead

A collection of tales from Catherine Lim which readers are advised not to take too seriously but as “simply a product of a free-wheeling imagination”.

Catherine Lim’s free-wheeling imagination cheerfully dispenses with all constraints to tell stories of that other world. Written with an exaggerated sense of earnestness and caution, the eighteen tales in this collection elicit in the reader the very goosebumps of terror she had herself experienced as a child listening to such tales.

As an adult, these goosebumps persist for her. However, they no longer arise from fear, but from a sense of awe and mystery that she feels when she considers this large existential question: Despite our extensive scientific knowledge today, what do we know of the supernatural? What can we know of the supernatural?

Catherine’s deep and abiding sense of mystery is reflected in the pronouncement by one of her characters in the last story in this collection: “I don’t know, I don’t know. I wish I did.”

© 2019 by Catherine Lim. Published in paper format in Singapore by Marshall Cavendish International Asia, recorded by Storyside 2020.