Naghma
There are books that entertain you, books that move you, and then there are books like Swimming Lessons by Malcom Sia - books that become an experience. From the first page to the last, this haunting debut doesn’t just tell a story; it carries you, slowly and deliberately, into a world where grief, identity, memory, and myth twist around each other like currents in deep water.
When I finished reading Swimming Lessons, I didn’t cry - and the author, Malcom, actually asked me that when we later met to record a podcast together. But what I told him, and what I believe now even more strongly, is this: I didn’t cry because I was emotionally overwhelmed in a different way. This isn’t a book that builds to one shattering climax and releases you. Instead, it delivers wave after wave of quiet intensity - each one more piercing than the last.
This is not a linear novel. The timelines bleed into each other, the perspectives shift like light underwater. One moment you’re in a hospital room, the next in a memory, or a memory of a memory. There’s no “one great moment” that literature usually hinges on - a tragedy, an explosion of joy, an emotional outburst. Instead, Sia constructs something far more unsettling and beautiful: a tapestry of unresolved moments, one layered gently over another, like sediment at the bottom of a sea. This slow build, the refusal to conform to narrative high-and-low arcs, is what makes the book so powerful.
At one point, I had to pause reading, walk away, make a coffee, breathe, and then return - not because I was distracted, but because I was so immersed that I needed space to absorb it.
Malcom Sia, a Singapore-based writer and student of economics, shows wisdom far beyond his years in this debut. The protagonist, Michelle, is not portrayed as a spectacle. Her queerness, her grief, her frustration - they are all parts of a human story, not a performative one. The brilliance of Swimming Lessons lies in its refusal to frame Michelle as “special” - and in doing so, it makes her unforgettable. She is every one of us who has loved messily, mourned quietly, and searched for meaning in fragments of family and memory.
There are elements of the supernatural in the book - ghostly shadows that slip in and out of the pages - but they’re never loud. They don’t frighten. They mirror. They reflect the unspoken parts of us, the lingering grief, the unresolved past. As Malcom himself put it in our conversation, “Sometimes the supernatural isn’t about ghosts - it’s about the parts of ourselves we haven’t fully come to understand.”
Genre-wise, the book is undefinable - and proudly so. It holds literary fiction, speculative mystery, identity politics, Southeast Asian myth, psychological realism, and a deep emotional resonance all at once. You’ll find moments that feel like fantasy, paragraphs that read like poetry, and truths that sting like confessions. It’s a rojak of emotions and genres - a Singaporean term that beautifully translates to “an eclectic mix.”
The setting of Singapore in Swimming Lessons is worth mentioning separately. This isn’t the postcard version of Singapore - no shiny skyline or hawker stall nostalgia. Malcom gives us the in-between spaces, the alien yet familiar, the soft and the strange, the Singapore that hums beneath the noise, as isolating as it is intimate.
Personally, I haven’t read anything quite like it. And honestly, I don’t think there are many books like this coming out of India either. It’s rare to find something this experimental, this emotionally layered, and this unafraid to be quiet in its storytelling.
Knowing that Swimming Lessons was born out of real grief - that it came from Malcom’s months beside his comatose mother, and that writing it was his form of therapy - only deepens the respect I have for what he’s created.
Now that the reading is done and the podcast episode is on its way, I find myself already looking forward to what Malcom Sia writes next. He told me he’s working on a new project rooted in Chinese culture, religion, and mythology - another deeply personal exploration, shaped by a recent transformative trip to Chongqing, China. And if that’s anything like Swimming Lessons, then I already know: it will be quiet, bold, deeply introspective - and impossible to forget.
Review by:
Naghma PK, Founder - The Author’s Nest
@friend4u.nags
