Sundays With Sumiko

Sumiko Tan wrote her first personal column as a young reporter in 1994. Over the next 22 years, her fortnightly column in The Sunday Times gathered a faithful readership and made her a household name. With heartfelt honesty, her columns chronicled the ups and downs of singlehood, working life and, when it finally happened when she was 46, married life.


Sundays with Sumiko is a collection of her most representative columns over the past two decades, exploring family, love, friends, career, dogs, death, and marriage.


The book follows Sumiko’s journey from horizon-broadening travels and singlehood woes of the Nineties, to musings about romance and ageing in the Noughties, to an exciting reunion with a junior college friend that culminated in marriage. In the last section of the book, Now, Sumiko explores married life, negotiates her new role as a stepmum, and reaffirms the importance of everyday moments of happiness. Her columns also explore the lighter side of things: whether it is learning to swim as an adult, waxing nostalgic about Yaohan supermarket, finally getting Lasik eye surgery, or the woes of having different air-conditioning preferences from her husband.