The House of Doors
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023
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4.2 • 61 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, NEW YORKER AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of the early twentieth century. But in 1921 he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write.
His friend Robert Hamlyn offers an escape in the Straits Settlements of Penang, where Robert’s steely wife Lesley learns to see Willie as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.
As Willie prepares to leave, Lesley confides in him secrets of her own, including how she came to know the charismatic revolutionary Dr Sun Yat Sen. And more scandalous still, her connection to an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts – a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tan (The Garden of Evening Mists) explores the power of storytelling in this intoxicating outing. At Cassowary House in Penang, Malaya, in 1921, Lesley Hamlyn prepares to receive "Willie" Somerset Maugham, the famed English writer and friend of her husband, Robert. Increasingly drawn to Willie—who is desperate for new material for a novel to stave off bankruptcy—Lesley gradually unburdens herself to the author, unearthing a trove of long-buried secrets ranging from the personal to the political. Tan seamlessly merges fact and fiction as he explores the underlying tensions in both Lesley and Willie's marriages, as well as Lesley's intriguing involvement with the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen during his 1910 sojourn in Penang. A side plot involves Lesley's friend Ethel Proudlock, another real-life figure, who stood trial for the murder of her fellow Englishman in Kuala Lumpur. As in Tan's other works, the narrative dwells on memory and loss, its lush, dreamy prose evoking the bygone days of colonial pre-WWII British Malaya amid musings on life's ephemeral nature, while never losing its eye for injustice: "For a woman to be remembered," Lesley laments, "she has to either be a queen or a whore. But for those of us who lead normal, mundane lives, who will remember us?" This is a stunner.
Customer Reviews
Straitened circumstances
4.5 stars
Author
Malaysian lawyer turned writer. The Gift of Rain (2007), was longlisted for the Booker. The Garden of Evening Mists (2011) won the Man Asian Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. This is his third novel.
Summary
The setting is the expat community of early 20th century Penang. Lawyer Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley invite Robert’s old university friend and former roommate, the celebrated writer W Somerset Maugham (Willie) and his male secretary (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Gerald to stay. (Willie and Gerry are just back from Sarawak where they got a nasty dose of colitis.) The Hamlyns live a comfortable life (their kids are at school in England) but the marriage is strained, not just because of Robert’s lung problems after being gassed in the trenches during WW1. Flashbacks to events 11 years previous are revealing. (Chinese revolutionary Dr Sun Yat-sen was once a house guest too). Willie has his financial problems, and finds inspiration for a new work in form of a local expatriate housewife jailed for murdering her philandering husband.
Writing
Beautiful. The evocation of time and place is superb. The admixture of historical figures and fiction pitch perfect. Prologue and epilogue chapters, set in semiarid South Africa where, over his wife’s protests, Robert Hamlyn insists on moving (for the benefit of his damaged lungs), only serve to reinforce the lushness of the Straits (of Malacca).