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shelleyanderson4127 's review for:
The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This historical novel was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. It's set in the 1920s, in the British colony of what is now Malaysia. It is a fictionalized account of the visit of W. Somerset Maugham, with his male lover, to a well-to-do English couple in Penang.
The main characters are wife Lesley Hamlyn and Maugham. They become close as each confesses to the other incidences from their lives that would be condemned by the rigid class and gender rules of the time.
Lesley suspects her husband is having an affair. Her own relationship to the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen is suspect. Maugham, a closeted homosexual, is facing financial ruin and a return to Britain and his loveless marriage.
The physical descriptions of Penang are beautiful and the historical aspects of this novel fascinating. But given how much I enjoyed Eng's previous novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, I was disappointed. While I sympathized with Lesley, I never warmed to the character of Maugham. (Though I will read his controversial short story "Rain", which scandalized people of the time).
I am happy that I read through to the end, however, as this saved the story for me. It was lovely. This is a novel for Maugham fans and for anyone wanting to know more about Malaysia, or indeed the bourgeois life of British colonialists. The themes of race, class and gender are well rendered, but the novel as a whole felt flat to me.