Having met her before during my JC days, I didn't expect much since I thought that it will probably be about the same thing.
However, the woman writer, though petite, struck me as a very passionate woman about her work. She holds a love towards her writing and her characters, which is evident in both times that I've heard her speak. The way she read parts of her novel were energetic and full of life.
There was something she said during that lecture that really caused me to wonder. That is, when she kept urging us to read the novel to enjoy it rather than as a literary text.
This made me wonder if sometimes, we tend to over-analyse certain subjects and themes in novels, in literature itself. With the aim to write a good report, we debunk every single sentence to find something beyond what the normal reader would see. Through that process, we may actually get a deeper sense of the novel and how it relates to the world that the author sees, but does that diminish the simple enjoyment of just reading a book as it is? Is that really the author's intention?
I would always remember during a lecture in JC, when one of my classmates asked Lim why the title 'Fistful of Colours' and she replied that there wasn't any particular reason for that, it was just a nice name that her friend had suggested to her. We were all taken aback as we had spent many lessons discussing about that, trying to figure out what went through the author's mind.
But that said, there is always a little sense of accomplishment after every attempt to discover a theme and seeing the grades go up with each try. I guess it's a matter of balancing... and yes, I still love Lit.
