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A review by justabean_reads
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
4.0
Booker longlist. Flashing between the 1940s, 1920s and 1910, the story surrounds Somerset Maugham's visit to Penang in what was at the time a British crown colony. He and his lover stay with an English family, who are themselves in some turmoil, while the hostess thinks back to her relationship with Sun Yet Sen, when he himself had been in Penang. Along the way, they revisit the 1911 murder trial that formed the basis for Maugham's story "The Letter."
Much of the book is about how storytelling layers around events, getting told, retold and recontextualised as the narrative is passed from one person to another, sometimes over decades. We hear the same words again, but from further back in the chain of reminiscences, and with a different meaning. I think you'd get a bit more out of this if you were more familiar with the life and works of Somerset Maugham. My mom was into his stuff in the 1990s, but I think other than a couple film versions of The Razor's Edge and one of The Painted Veil, I don't really know his work at all. So much of the book assumes that you're familiar with Maugham's life and at least a couple key stories, and I think my ignorance meant I was missing a chunk of the conversation.
A friend who read this said they wanted more Sun Yet Sen, and less English writers, and I don't disagree, though I think the point was very much how colonial forces retell the story of a land to fit their own ends. And, to some extent, how it's interpersonal relationships and sexual tensions that can eat away at those barriers and complicate those stories. The book is also historical fiction of the school that doesn't especially care if the readers like the characters or not, and a lot of the language is often bluntly colonialist and sometimes homophobic (as a depiction, not an endorsement). I found it a bit refreshing given how much some authors want to pretty up the past, and always have point of view characters who agree with modern sensibilities, but I think the brutality could be alienating for some readers. It feels like Tan Twan Eng trusts his readers (though trusts them to have read The Casuarina Tree, also).
Much of the book is about how storytelling layers around events, getting told, retold and recontextualised as the narrative is passed from one person to another, sometimes over decades. We hear the same words again, but from further back in the chain of reminiscences, and with a different meaning. I think you'd get a bit more out of this if you were more familiar with the life and works of Somerset Maugham. My mom was into his stuff in the 1990s, but I think other than a couple film versions of The Razor's Edge and one of The Painted Veil, I don't really know his work at all. So much of the book assumes that you're familiar with Maugham's life and at least a couple key stories, and I think my ignorance meant I was missing a chunk of the conversation.
A friend who read this said they wanted more Sun Yet Sen, and less English writers, and I don't disagree, though I think the point was very much how colonial forces retell the story of a land to fit their own ends. And, to some extent, how it's interpersonal relationships and sexual tensions that can eat away at those barriers and complicate those stories. The book is also historical fiction of the school that doesn't especially care if the readers like the characters or not, and a lot of the language is often bluntly colonialist and sometimes homophobic (as a depiction, not an endorsement). I found it a bit refreshing given how much some authors want to pretty up the past, and always have point of view characters who agree with modern sensibilities, but I think the brutality could be alienating for some readers. It feels like Tan Twan Eng trusts his readers (though trusts them to have read The Casuarina Tree, also).