The Loving and The Dead by Catherine Lim

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.”