catskull
I finished reading Catskull about a week ago, and I can't stop thinking about Ram, our unreliable narrator. This 18-year-old boy going through A-levels in Singapore who feels completely invisible to the world around him, and the book resonates with a constant, permeating sense of grief.
Ram's unraveling begins with his Uncle Arun's death. Uncle Arun was someone who truly saw Ram and connected with him in ways no one else did. When Uncle Arun was killed in a car accident, the driver never found, leaving Ram carrying this unresolved wound.
There could have been a moment where Ram and his brother Logan might have found solace together through their shared memories. But Logan chose to distance himself – partying, dating around, focusing on National Service – leaving Ram even more isolated.
Then there's Kass, Ram's best friend and one of his few remaining anchors. Watching her come to school with different bruises each day, knowing she's suffering at the hands of her abusive father, pushes Ram toward desperate measures. He tries everything "by the book" first – asking if she's okay, suggesting social services or police intervention – but when nothing works, he feels helpless, watching his friend suffer and fearing he'll lose her too.
So he steps in. His initial plan was simply to scare Kass's dad into stopping the abuse (which, honestly, I'm not sure how he thought would work). When things go sideways and he kills Kass's dad, that's when everything truly spirals – the first death becomes many, and Ram loses sight of himself.
It's heartbreaking seeing how the story unfolds. He identifies way too much with the decaying cat body he, Kass, and Paris found. He believes himself to already be dead – in his own words:
"I had not been special since Primary 6. Teachers no longer looked at me, paid me attention. I wasn't worth the effort to coach into greatness or to lift from the slums. I simply was."
His home life offers no refuge. His brother only interacts with him when their mother forces it or when Logan wants something. His parents talk at him as though he doesn't exist as a person with his own needs and desires. There's this incredibly awkward conversation where they attempt to discuss sex but can't even address him directly – while Ram thinks they're referring to his private box of violence and death videos he watches with Kass.
I empathise with Ram, he tried to fit in, to be "normal," but he's rejected at every turn. When you're in school, especially in Singapore's pressure-cooker education system, your world narrows to that sliver of experience where being alone feels like the worst possible fate. I remember being a student myself, convinced I would die from a bad grade – the dramatics and horror felt all too real in those moments. It's not just hormones; it's that student life in Singapore can intensify to such a degree that you can't see beyond your present circumstances.
Despite Ram and Kass bonding as outsiders, there's always this undercurrent of awareness that their trajectories differ.
"We both know I'm not going to university. I'm not... A's won't matter to me. I may not even make it to NS. I'm not getting a job, I'm not getting married, having kids, buying a car." // We've talked around it. But I've never been so direct before. // "That's not for me. I don't get that far." // She sighs. "Ram..." // "Those things can't matter to people like me."
Kass comes from wealth; even when she doesn't try, she excels academically. She has options. Ram has tried and fallen short of his hopes. The contrast becomes painfully clear at the book's end when Kass tells Ram she's going to the UK with her younger brother for a fresh start. Ram doesn't have that luxury – after A-levels, it's straight to National Service, two years belonging to the state before he can truly begin living.
In the end, Ram never gets to start over. He dies before even seeing his A-level results, never knowing he actually achieved the three As he wanted. By that point, he's haunted by everyone he's killed and all the crimes he's witnessed, reality and dreams blurring until he's barely conscious of anything happening around him and his own actions.
I don't know how else the book could have ended. It's a satisfactory conclusion, though bittersweet. Let me end of this reflection with my favourite quote from the book:
"I am a tornado. I am a tsunami. I am a plague. I am a scourge. I am a pyre. I am a bonfire, flames lashing out over head. I am smoke. I am a cyclone. I am a torrent, rushing over the streets. I am a flood, cleaning the city of its filth. I am a storm. I am thunder, booming overhead. I am lightning. I am the streetlight, watching from above. I am the sky. I am a star. I am the sharp end of the hammer, digging into his sides. I am the blade of his parang. I am the fighting wraps on Matthew's fist. I am Doreen Manana's corpse, decomposing in a cupboard. I am a broken glass, crashing against a pillar. I am the front bumper on a Honda Civic, dented by the bone of Uncle Arun's. I am the baseball bat in my hands, crashing against bone and flesh. I am the back of Jiahao's skull, caving in against the end of a hockey stick. I am despair, I am pain, I am justice, I am death. I am not that cat, wasting away, half-sunken into soil, beneath a fence, maggots crawling through my brain. I am something they will remember."