Author: Yeoh Jo‑Ann
Genre: Literary Fiction / Slice-of-Life / SingLit
Ideal For: Readers who delight in quiet revelations, everyday disquiet turned tender, and novels that hover between whimsy and profound. If you’ve ever paused mid-routine and wondered, What am I really doing here?—this is the book you’ll carry with you long after.
Plot Summary (Spoiler-free)
From the first pages of Impractical Uses of Cake, you’re drawn into the life of Sukhin Dhillon—a thirty-five-year-old literature teacher in Singapore who has it all according to the checklist—steady job, comfortable apartment, polite parents—but none of it feels like his. Then he collides with Jinn, his former classmate, now living among the cardboard shelters of the city’s homeless. A slice of cake offered at an alleyway brings more than sugar—it unlocks a reckoning. This isn’t a grand love story—it’s a gentle collapse of careful lives, a poking of the “right track,” a question of what’s impractical and what’s essential.
The novel isn’t about dramatic reversals; it’s about small cracks. Sukhin’s neat routines, his sighs of disappointment, his unexamined comfort, all begin to vibrate. The cake, the foraging excursions, the awkward reconnection—they all matter. The author writes about loneliness, systemic oddities, the under-recognised homeless community of Singapore, and yet does so without melodrama. The tone is spare but full.
Yeoh’s Craft: Quiet, Observant, Unexpectedly Tender
Yeoh Jo-Ann writes as though she’s listening—listening to the hum of fluorescent-lit staff rooms, the muted thwap of exercise echoes, the rust-leaves of cardboard shelter cracks.
Yet for all the subtlety, the story is not flat. Yeoh uses metaphor (a slice of cake, a cardboard hut, an alleyway encounter) and everyday specificity to build something that sneaks up on you. The blend of existential restlessness and cultural specificity feels both local and universal.
Themes That Echo After the Final Page
The “Dream” that Doesn’t Fit. Sukhin is living the “Singaporean dream” and yet it doesn’t thrill him. Yeoh invites us to ask: what happens when achievement is accomplished but not felt?
Invisibility & Affliction. Jinn’s homelessness isn’t sensationalised—it’s woven into the fabric of a blinking city. The book honours those who disappear from view while our heroes adjust their lives around them.
Connection over Convention. The cake moment offers more than dessert—it offers recognition, a breaking of protocol, a possibility of different life. “Impractical uses” indeed.
Everyday Rebellion. Going off-track, drifting, choosing not to choose the “correct” path—these become acts of quiet bravery. The novel celebrates the misfit, the stray, the outsider.
What Works Beautifully
Voice that feels alive. Sukhin is both familiar and strange—in his frustrations and in his stillness. The language reflects his inward drift.
Setting that breathes. The Singapore of the novel isn’t postcard-perfect; it’s full of alleyways, classrooms, parents’ expectations, support classes. The author makes it lived-in.
Heart without saccharine. This book could have tipped into pathos or pity—but it doesn’t. It remains grounded, diverting our sympathy in interesting directions.
Layers of humour and ache. The wry commentary on staff meetings, on suburban monotony, on collecting little things—they all land. One reviewer describes it as “quirky and heart-warming.”
A Tiny Note (But Not a Detractor)
Thr female character, Jinn, isn’t as fully drawn as Sukhin—and that the story’s focus on him, to the relative exclusion of her interiority, leaves something wanting.
Also, the novel doesn’t have a high-octane plot. If you go in craving twisty momentum, you might find the pace meditative. But if you’re open to reflection, this is precisely what works.
Why You’ll Remember It
When you close the book, you might recall that line about cake, about a teacher’s epiphany in a corridor, about the cardboard shelter in a back-street of the city you thought you knew. You’ll carry the question: What am I doing when I think I’m doing everything right? You’ll remember the odd laughter of a teacher who bakes, the silence of someone who lives on the margins, and how their meeting changed more than either expected.
This is the kind of book you recommend quietly, saying: “Read this if you ever feel too comfortable in your chaos.” It will sit on your shelf until you think about stillness again.
Impractical Uses of Cake earns its five-star rating because it is small-scale and big-hearted, quietly observant and deeply resonant. Yeoh Jo-Ann has crafted a novel that slips past convention, invites you into corners of society you might not see, and leaves you with the taste of sugar and the ache of recognition. If you want a novel that lingers—go here. Let it unfold slowly. Savour it like a piece of cake you didn’t need, but deeply appreciated.
