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fictionfan 's review for:
The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
Colonial tales…
Robert and Lesley Hamlyn live in Cassowary House in Penang, part of the colonial settlement there. Lesley was born in Malaya (as it was called then) and has lived there all her life, while Robert is British-born and came to Penang as an adult. It is 1921, and Robert is still suffering badly from the lung damage he sustained during the war. Their two sons are in boarding school in England. Outwardly they seem to be a contented couple, mixing with the best of Malayan society. But when Robert’s old friend, the famous novelist Willie Somerset Maugham, comes to visit, Lesley finds herself telling him stories from her past – how they once knew Dr Sun Yat Sen when he spent some time in Penang, and how Ethel Proudlock, a friend of Lesley’s, was once tried for murder. And along the way, she reveals the history of her marriage to Robert. Willie is considering writing a book about Sun Yat Sen, but in the end it’s the story of Ethel Proudlock that fascinates him, and which he will later turn into one of his most successful stories.
Tan writes beautifully and his descriptive prose especially paints wonderful pictures of Penang during the colonial era. It is the writing that kept me going and meant that I enjoyed the book overall, despite some fairly hefty reservations as to the content. I’m rather confused about how I feel about it, to be honest. It has everything I should love – great writing, colonial setting, interesting characters. Yet somehow it never fully won me over – I didn’t feel emotionally invested. Let me try to explain why.
The first thing is that it seemed very odd that it reads almost exactly as if it were traditional colonial fiction written by a Brit. If that was what Tan was trying to achieve, then he certainly has. But since there is already a ton of colonial literature written by Brits, I somehow expected and hoped for a different perspective from a Malaysian writer. With the exception of the Sun Yat Sen strand, the story is relentlessly set among the colonial community, and therefore I felt gave no insight at all on how Malayans lived, or what they thought of life under colonial rule. Even in the Sun Yat Sen story, it is all about his interactions with the Brits – we are told of his popularity in China and of the ambivalence of the Malay Chinese, who have, according to Tan, largely bought into British culture. There is a Chinese character who plays an important role, but honestly, if Tan hadn’t told us he was Chinese, I wouldn’t have known – he seemed as colonially British as the Brits in terms of culture and attitudes.
The second thing that irritated me was that, in line with nearly every other piece of literary fiction written in the last decade, two of the main themes are the social and legal prejudice against homosexuality and the subjugated position of women. I find this concentration on fashionable themes tedious. I’ve said it before, but I always imagine publishers sending out a ticklist at the beginning of each year to authors, telling them which themes they must include if they want to be published – currently, strong women fighting against the patriarchy, tick; gay people being victims of homophobia, tick; straight men being violent and misogynistic, tick; white people being racist and non-white people being victims, tick. Tan pretty much covers them all to a greater or lesser degree. It’s not that I feel any of these things are intrinsically untrue, but they are not universally true. It’s bland when every book repeats the same messages.
But the thing that I think most niggled me was the incorporation of more than one of Maugham’s famous stories into the stories that Lesley tells. Tan is making the point that Maugham apparently often used real stories as the basis for his tales, sometimes without even changing the names, and Tan suggests that Maugham made himself unpopular in the Malayan colonial community as a result. Fair enough – interesting point and raises valid ethical questions. However, I didn’t feel Tan explored those questions – he simply left them hanging, and I couldn’t help feeling that, by using Maugham and other real people as characters in his book, Tan was doing rather the same thing himself. And I felt, to be honest, that the interesting bits in this story were mainly the bits that retold Maugham’s stories, and frankly, I think Maugham tells them better. Again I’ve said it before, but if a writer chooses to reference one of the greats of literature in his work, then he needs to be sure that his own writing will not suffer from the inevitable comparisons that any reader must make. I suspect if I hadn’t read Maugham’s stories quite recently, I’d have enjoyed this book more. As it is, though, I spent most of my time thinking I’d rather be reading Maugham.
Having said all that, the quality of the writing still makes it an enjoyable read overall, although slow and not as insightful or original as I’d hoped it might be. In all fairness, I need to point out that most people are raving about it, so hopefully my grumpy review will not deter anyone from reading it. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Canongate.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Robert and Lesley Hamlyn live in Cassowary House in Penang, part of the colonial settlement there. Lesley was born in Malaya (as it was called then) and has lived there all her life, while Robert is British-born and came to Penang as an adult. It is 1921, and Robert is still suffering badly from the lung damage he sustained during the war. Their two sons are in boarding school in England. Outwardly they seem to be a contented couple, mixing with the best of Malayan society. But when Robert’s old friend, the famous novelist Willie Somerset Maugham, comes to visit, Lesley finds herself telling him stories from her past – how they once knew Dr Sun Yat Sen when he spent some time in Penang, and how Ethel Proudlock, a friend of Lesley’s, was once tried for murder. And along the way, she reveals the history of her marriage to Robert. Willie is considering writing a book about Sun Yat Sen, but in the end it’s the story of Ethel Proudlock that fascinates him, and which he will later turn into one of his most successful stories.
Tan writes beautifully and his descriptive prose especially paints wonderful pictures of Penang during the colonial era. It is the writing that kept me going and meant that I enjoyed the book overall, despite some fairly hefty reservations as to the content. I’m rather confused about how I feel about it, to be honest. It has everything I should love – great writing, colonial setting, interesting characters. Yet somehow it never fully won me over – I didn’t feel emotionally invested. Let me try to explain why.
The first thing is that it seemed very odd that it reads almost exactly as if it were traditional colonial fiction written by a Brit. If that was what Tan was trying to achieve, then he certainly has. But since there is already a ton of colonial literature written by Brits, I somehow expected and hoped for a different perspective from a Malaysian writer. With the exception of the Sun Yat Sen strand, the story is relentlessly set among the colonial community, and therefore I felt gave no insight at all on how Malayans lived, or what they thought of life under colonial rule. Even in the Sun Yat Sen story, it is all about his interactions with the Brits – we are told of his popularity in China and of the ambivalence of the Malay Chinese, who have, according to Tan, largely bought into British culture. There is a Chinese character who plays an important role, but honestly, if Tan hadn’t told us he was Chinese, I wouldn’t have known – he seemed as colonially British as the Brits in terms of culture and attitudes.
The second thing that irritated me was that, in line with nearly every other piece of literary fiction written in the last decade, two of the main themes are the social and legal prejudice against homosexuality and the subjugated position of women. I find this concentration on fashionable themes tedious. I’ve said it before, but I always imagine publishers sending out a ticklist at the beginning of each year to authors, telling them which themes they must include if they want to be published – currently, strong women fighting against the patriarchy, tick; gay people being victims of homophobia, tick; straight men being violent and misogynistic, tick; white people being racist and non-white people being victims, tick. Tan pretty much covers them all to a greater or lesser degree. It’s not that I feel any of these things are intrinsically untrue, but they are not universally true. It’s bland when every book repeats the same messages.
But the thing that I think most niggled me was the incorporation of more than one of Maugham’s famous stories into the stories that Lesley tells. Tan is making the point that Maugham apparently often used real stories as the basis for his tales, sometimes without even changing the names, and Tan suggests that Maugham made himself unpopular in the Malayan colonial community as a result. Fair enough – interesting point and raises valid ethical questions. However, I didn’t feel Tan explored those questions – he simply left them hanging, and I couldn’t help feeling that, by using Maugham and other real people as characters in his book, Tan was doing rather the same thing himself. And I felt, to be honest, that the interesting bits in this story were mainly the bits that retold Maugham’s stories, and frankly, I think Maugham tells them better. Again I’ve said it before, but if a writer chooses to reference one of the greats of literature in his work, then he needs to be sure that his own writing will not suffer from the inevitable comparisons that any reader must make. I suspect if I hadn’t read Maugham’s stories quite recently, I’d have enjoyed this book more. As it is, though, I spent most of my time thinking I’d rather be reading Maugham.
Having said all that, the quality of the writing still makes it an enjoyable read overall, although slow and not as insightful or original as I’d hoped it might be. In all fairness, I need to point out that most people are raving about it, so hopefully my grumpy review will not deter anyone from reading it. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Canongate.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com