More than a few thoughts and a mini book review

I'm always a little wary of hospitals, having spent an inordinate amount of time in several of them when I was much younger. It wasn't I who was ill but very close members of the family, some of whom got to go home and resume life as was before - which included complaining about homework and eating heaps of birthday cake - and others who went on to where the rest of us couldn't follow.

My grandmother was a patient at Singapore General Hospital seventeen years ago and when I returned to it last week, after my grandfather was transferred there from Changi General Hospital, I felt as an aged soldier, wandering in a daze as if I were visiting an old battle ground. There stood the old clock tower, a beautiful white structure in the blazing afternoon sun. It's now a museum. But seventeen years ago, my grandmother lay in a ward within that building, and there I leaned towards her and told her how my best subject that year was Chinese. My second language skills deteriorated significantly after that year, and my grandmother never came home again. I remember watching with fascination the document carriers that ran along the edges of the ceiling like electric trains in toy shops. Today they sport signs like "Let's be more courteous to each other." I snickered at such signs last week when I began visiting my grandfather here. But I've now decided that the employees at the shops and food stalls at SGH are noticably more cheerful and polite than anywhere else. The 7-Eleven cashier smiled and said "hello" even though I was making a measly purchase of bottled water. She smiled again - very sincerely - as I retrieved my change from her palm and I smiled in return. At lunch, I asked the dessert stall lady if she could put more milk on my ice kachang. She obliged without any grumbling. My mom was all praises too, saying that when she purchased some papaya for my grandfather during lunch hour two days ago, she asked the lady if she wouldn't mind slicing the papaya into bite-size pieces. Despite the crowd, the lady cheerfully obliged. Perhaps they know how much the families and friends of patients need that bit of a grin, that kind word, and every small gesture that cheers them if only for a few seconds.

My grandfather's surgery - they made three grafts from a blood vessel in his leg - took some five hours. He was wheeled out of the operating theater at a quarter to five. At the ICU, he was attached to a breathing apparatus with large tubes (the size of those on vaccum cleaners) and a half-filled packet of blood dangled above him like a small scarlet plant. The nurse assigned to him talked to my mom while I stared into his room. I didn't listen to the conversation; nothing has ever been so reassuring as the barely perceptible rise and fall of a blanket-covered chest.

My mom and I were stayed at the hospital for about nine hours. We had my Ipod, a Clive Cussler thriller for her, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for me. At 782 pages, the book was more than enough to occupy me as I waited. Seeing as how Neil Gaiman calls Susanna Clarke, the author, one of his favorite fantasy writers, you just know that the book is quality with a "Q." This book isn't for the impatient reader who only devours fast-paced thrillers. It isn't for typical fantasy readers either, even though the two title characters are practising magicians. But if you're in it for the long haul, you'll get to enjoy some very well developed characters, richly imagined magical and historical scapes, and several hundred pages of page-turning excitement near the end (the first few hundred pages develop the characters and the context of 19th-century England). As Washington Post puts it, this book is meant to be "lived in for weeks." It has the social comedy of Jane Austen and the dark mythology of fantasy. And this is Susanna Clarke's first novel (it took her a decade to complete). She used to edit cookbooks for Simon and Schuster.

The book kept me company and helped me avoid the anxiety that I expected to suffer during the long wait. For that alone, I'm grateful to Ms. Clarke. But faced also with such splendid, humorous, thoroughly enchanting writing, I'm in awe of her.