Country Madness is a delightfully quirky memoir of a Singaporean psychiatrist in rural England that spans five seasons (the fifth season being a Chinese state of mind that might equate to an English “Indian Summer”).
In humorous and insightful prose, Ong Yong Lock describes living in two cultures and belonging to both. He shares his thoughts about his adopted home, his Chinese cultural roots and his attraction to the mysterious Carolyn as well as to pheasants (which he considers a prototype of the Chinese phoenix). The authors musings are further illustrated by a series of paintings he commissioned from a Chinese husband and wife artist couple living in England. These young artists have since become leading lights in the contemporary Chinese art scene and their paintings may be found at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum.
This very idiosyncratic English country diary is written by a Singaporean psychiatrist with an acute eye for cultural differences as well as the wonderful frailties of the human psyche.
Ong Yong Lock was born in Singapore in 1947. A Year of the Golden Pig. On completing his medical studies and house jobs at the University of Singapore, he left for postgraduate psychiatric training in the United Kingdom. This marks the start of living in two countries with a foot firmly rooted in both camps. In 2007 he was awarded a silver medal for his contribution to medical services in the UK’s National Health Service.
“Read this book as though you are sharing a bottle of plum wine with a friend. Listen to the authors’s trials and tribulations when he was flooded out of his country cottage in Norfolk. Laugh as he yelped and jumped when he found on his dining table the pair of bloodied pheasants that his gardener had shot. Smile at his tremulous joy after meeting the love of his life, Carolyn, and then was aghast that this English woman shot rabbits in her garden with an air rifle.”
–Suchen Christine Lim, Singapore Literature Prize-winning author
“Country Madness reverberates with a delicate sensitivity and sharp wit that are both Chinese and English but go beyond both. Reading it is a heady transformative experience.”
–Nigel Barley, author and social anthropologist
