WRITING THE UNSPOKEN

Thammika Songkaeo on motherhood, fragility and finding truth through fiction

- STORY: SAWARIN SUWICHAKORNPONG

“Hearts are meant to be broken” was written in De Profundis in 1897 by the imprisoned Oscar Wilde during his jail sentence at Reading Gaol in Surrey, England.

Writers, philosophers and psychologists have indeed long warned that too much loving can only lead to profound heartbreak, since it is in human nature to abuse anything that is derived without a cost. Stamford Hospital, the debut novel by Thammika Songkaeo, published by Penguin Random House (Southeast Asia) in 2025, is a literary manifestation of this painful truism.

The book tells the story of Tarisa, a well-educated and solidly middle-class woman whose life is gravely affected by her unrelenting service of love. In marrying, the once academically adroit and ambitious thirty-something woman gives up her promising career. She migrates with Chris, her husband, to Singapore, as the man — extremely affluent as well as highly educated, like herself — chooses the city-state as their home because he had experienced discrimination in America, a country the nuptial couple had planned to live in permanently.

In the male-dominated and “homegrown” economy of Singapore, Tarisa is confined to mediocre jobs, changing sporadically from waitressing to pseudo-academic research under the supervision of discriminatory employers. Motherhood’s excruciating demands of childcare become overbearing, to the extent that she is close to the brink of destruction. Needing a room of her own, Tarisa checks Mia, her five-year-old daughter, into Stamford Hospital for medical assistance, despite the latter being barely sick. The book’s narrative is intricately unravelled with loneliness, sorrow and brutal reflections on the fragilities of life and the human condition, set over the course of two nights.