Adorable
Wan Phing Lim
Penguin Random House SEA: 2025
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Survival in today’s world seems to depend on small, sustaining fantasies—knocking on wood, wearing ‘lucky’ underwear, following morning routines. We fill everyday life with routines that organise uncertainty into something bearable. Adorable by Wan Phing Lim makes such attempts to make sense of things visible: coping mechanisms appear not as background habits but as part of the very fabric of social reality.

Lim’s anthology of short stories is set on the island of Penang, Malaysia. In the book’s blurb, she writes that Adorable “depicts how the island makes its people do crazy things” and that her characters “navigate a world of tension”. It is precisely this framing of “crazy things”, particularly in three of the stories—‘Leg of Lamb’, ‘Four’, and ‘Pig’s Head’—that captured my attention.

• Tags: Issue 45, Malaysia, Shumin Tan