This is an Indonesian-language book, but I’m writing the review in English because its quality deserves the broader attention as a hidden gem of Indonesian literature.
It is a book of 10 short stories, that aims to portray the many different point of views in a diverse society: 1. A crippled boy from a village who goes to the big city to do scrap jobs at the bottom of society 2. A village administrator being set up for an arranged marriage 3. A rags-to-riches success story of an incredible man who becomes too cocky and succumbed into worldly sins and ended up isolating himself in an island 4. An honest government official in his retirement days, being tested by his rule-breaking neighbour 5. A mother whose son got involved in a religious extremist group 6. An Asian immigrant’s life in Paris 7. The local affairs within a housing complex, from a house maid’s point of view 8. An infrastructure project in a village that failed because there’s no education for the locals 9. The struggles of a spoiled child of a wealthy millionaire family 10. A story of a highly educated woman being domestically abused.
One thing that becomes immediately obvious when reading this book is the richness of the narrative in these stories, where in a short enough length the author, Nh. Dini, is able to provide a depth of character, can show complex relationships between the personalities, and able to elaborate them with a wild diversion that makes the plot really unpredictable.
Like story no 10 that begins as merely a domestic violence story, which later expand into a disturbing pedophilia and grooming story, and then a second plot twist that quickly damages the victim’s character from being emphatical to exasperation. Although I really don’t like the morale of this particular story, it is also a testament of Dini’s understanding of psychology and masterful technique as a writer that intentionally pushes her story right to the edge of comfort.
The richness of the story can also be found all the way at the beginning in story number 1, where in just few pages it tells the tale of a person’s hardship since birth, to his toughness on overcoming his disability, his drive to work hard in the city, his daily struggles in the harshest environments, and all the plot twists within this story that highlight the many social injustices. This story provides different kind of lessons, which ultimately show how life looks like at the bottom of the social class.
And of course, story number 8, where the book gets its title. It is a cheeky analogy of what Indonesia is all about: a multi-religion and multi-ethnic effort to build a project together, complete with all the cross-social-class struggles and doubts, which naturally require a sacrifice from the poor; but somehow successfully built, only to be quickly discarded simply due to the lack of planning to educate the intended users. And thus, an abandoned public toilet becomes yet another “monument” of mismanagement and miscommunication that we can unfortunately find all across the country.
I just love how Dini can play around with the reader’s emotions, and shows a masterclass of storytelling within just a limited amount of space. And once you start reading it, it is quite difficult to put down. I had to read it all the way to the end in one sitting, before I can finally stop.
THE CHAOS THEORY 