Amazon's "Best Book of the Month"
A brilliant and utterly engaging novel--Emma set in modern Asia--about
a young woman's rise in the glitzy, moneyed city of Singapore, where old
traditions clash with heady modern materialism.
On the edge of twenty-seven, Jazzy hatches a plan for her and her best
girlfriends: Sher, Imo, and Fann. Before the year is out, these Sarong
Party Girls will all have spectacular weddings to rich ang
moh--Western expat--husbands, with Chanel babies (the cutest status
symbols of all) quickly to follow. Razor-sharp, spunky, and vulgarly
brand-obsessed, Jazzy is a determined woman who doesn't lose.
As she fervently pursues her quest to find a white husband, this
bombastic yet tenderly vulnerable gold-digger reveals the contentious
gender politics and class tensions thrumming beneath the shiny exterior
of Singapore's glamorous nightclubs and busy streets, its grubby wet
markets and seedy hawker centers. Moving through her colorful,
stratified world, she realizes she cannot ignore the troubling
incongruity of new money and old-world attitudes which threaten to crush
her dreams. Desperate to move up in Asia's financial and international
capital, will Jazzy and her friends succeed?
Vividly told in Singlish--colorful Singaporean English with its
distinctive cadence and slang--Sarong Party Girls brilliantly captures
the unique voice of this young, striving woman caught between worlds.
With remarkable vibrancy and empathy, Cheryl Tan brings not only Jazzy,
but her city of Singapore, to dazzling, dizzying life.
