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fionnualalirsdottir 's review for:
The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
Doors.
There are so many types.
Open doors, closed doors, half doors, glass doors, mirrored doors, painted doors, swinging doors, revolving doors.
This book is a little like all those types of doors, but mostly it's like the final one: a revolving door.
The story revolves between fact, fiction, and fan-fiction.
There is the fact of William Somerset Maugham's trip to Malaya in 1921.
There is the fact that a woman called Ethel Proudlock murdered a man in Kuala Lumpur in 1911.
There is the fact of the publication in 1926 of Maugham's collection of stories, [b:The Casuarina Tree|887838|The Casuarina Tree|W. Somerset Maugham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1179194622l/887838._SY75_.jpg|873087], based on his time in Malaya.
That brings me neatly to the fiction part of this revolving door argument.
Maugham said himself that his stories were fictionalised renderings of real people and events he came across or heard about on his travels, including the above-mentioned episode of Ethel Proudlock's trial for the murder of her lover which Maugham retold in a story called 'The Letter', changing the location from an urban setting to a rural one and altering the names of the characters. Ethel is called Leslie in his version, and her husband is called Robert, and Maugham invents a plot involving blackmail over a letter Leslie had written to the victim inviting him to call on her the night she murdered him—whereas her statement to the police had said she hadn't communicated with him in months.
If you're wondering why I'm going into such detail about that particular story, it's simply to help introduce the fan-fiction aspect of my revolving door argument.
In The House of Doors Tan Twan Eng has fictionalised Somerset Maugham's time in Malaya and has included a lot of the material from Maugham's Casuarina Tree stories, changing names of characters and details of plots as he goes along just as Maugham had done before him with real-life people and events.
And in a nice comic turn, Tan makes his invented characters comment on Maugham's habit of basing his stories on the people he meets in his travels, some of them even recognizing their 'real-life' selves in Maugham's characters. And Tan borrows the names 'Robert' and 'Leslie' from Maugham's story 'The Letter' for the main characters of his book—they are the couple with whom the fictionalised Maugham stays while visiting Penang. Tan also includes the story of Ethel Proudlock's trial that Maugham had fictionalised except that he changes the woman's name from Maugham's 'Leslie' back to the real-life name Ethel, and invents a different motive for the blackmail plot Maugham had come up with.
And to extend the door analogy, Tan designed his book to swing between two points of view. Like two half-panels of a double door (a double door features in the plot), the chapters alternate between a first-person narrative by Lesley and a third person narrative from the point of view of Somerset Maugham, called Willie in the story. Tan must have enjoyed fictionalising Maugham who had fictionalised so many real people in his work. His depiction of Maugham makes me feel that he holds him in very high regard but I did wonder about the real depth of his respect for the British author. From time to time, the writing in the 'Willie' chapters has a heavy-handed quality whereas the 'Lesley' chapters don't have that quality at all. I wondered if Tan might be commenting discreetly on Maugham's own style which I've found a bit laboured in some of his books, and especially in the stories in The Casuarina Tree.
Here's a few examples from The House of Doors :
He orbited the table to the windows.
And this one from a different scene:
‘It’s twice the size of Light’s tomb,’ said Willie as he completed his perambulation.
Is it only me who finds such phrasing ridiculous. Could it be deliberate on Tan's part?
What is definitely deliberate is the way Tan has modeled his main character, Lesley, whose surname is Hamlyn, not on Maugham's murderer character called Leslie but on another character called Mrs Hamlyn from the best story in The Casuarina Tree, entitled 'P&O'. Mrs Hamlyn in that story has recently discovered that her 'baldish, stoutish' husband has a lover. Lesley Hamlyn in Tan's story discovers something similar. But whereas Tan's Mrs Hamlyn chooses to stay in Malaya, Maugham's Mrs Hamlyn decides to abandon her life in Malaya and to take a ship back to England. She is a very fine character, and her thoughts, like Tan's Lesley Hamlyn's, are always engaging. She takes an interest in another passenger who is ill and who eventually dies on the journey, and she ponders the fact that with his death, his name will be forgotten:
Mrs. Hamlyn remembered what the consul had said, that among Mr. G’s papers no letters could be found, not the name of a single friend to whom the news of his death might be sent, and she knew not why this seemed to her unbearably tragic. There was something mysterious in a man who could pass through the world in such solitariness.
That thought echoes one that Tan's Lesley Hamlyn repeats often in one form or another. Here's the first version of it: A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. And Tan gives her a further thought to complete the revolving door effect: Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.
Tan also invents a scene where Lesley and Robert Hamlyn discuss the stories in the The Casuarina Tree which they buy some years after the fictional Willie Maugham stayed with them in Penang:
Robert bought a copy of The Casuarina Tree. He read it and passed it to me, not saying a word. I opened it with more than a little trepidation...
…‘I just wish he had described me accurately.’ Robert looked down at his seated form. ‘I’m not “baldish” and “stoutish”, am I?’
I laughed. ‘He didn’t think much of my looks either.’
‘We got off lightly, I suppose—even if he did cast you as a murderess. The bloody cheek of the man.’
And we, the readers, watching the cool way Tan re-tells Maugham's stories and re-casts his characters, realise what mirrored surfaces these revolving doors have turned out to be. Tan recycles elements out of every one of the six stories in Maugham's collection in one way or another—and there are reflections from other Maugham books too. Sometimes the recycling is as slight as the mention of an egret's feather or a Gauguin painting, sometimes it's only a side-show in a larger story like the tale of a woman who leaves her husband for the doctor who is treating her. But sometimes the recycling is as weighty as the episode of two men caught in the huge waves of a bore as it flowed upriver towards their light craft. When Willie (re)tells that story to Lesley in Tan's book, Lesley thinks about the luck that saved him from certain death on that occasion:
But...what was the price for [the luck's protection]. Was he cursed to live a long, long life, only to watch all his friends and loved ones fall by the wayside? To outlive everyone, even his enemies; to witness his popularity wane, his books forgotten...
Of course Tan knows that Maugham long outlived his friends and his loved ones, and witnessed the wane of his popularity. But his books are not completely forgotten. I don't always love his writing style but I read three of his books earlier this year and Tan Twan Eng motivated me to read a fourth, The Casuarina Tree. In fact I broke off reading The House of Doors after the second chapter (a Willie chapter that didn't appeal to me) and picked up the Maugham story collection that had been mentioned by Lesley in the retrospective piece at the beginning of Tan's book. I didn't love the first story in Maugham's book either so I went back to Tan's book for a bit, but then swung back to Maugham's and continued like that until I finished them both. I might not have finished either without the other. For me they were two panels of the same door. They each benefitted enormously from the other.
There are so many types.
Open doors, closed doors, half doors, glass doors, mirrored doors, painted doors, swinging doors, revolving doors.
This book is a little like all those types of doors, but mostly it's like the final one: a revolving door.
The story revolves between fact, fiction, and fan-fiction.
There is the fact of William Somerset Maugham's trip to Malaya in 1921.
There is the fact that a woman called Ethel Proudlock murdered a man in Kuala Lumpur in 1911.
There is the fact of the publication in 1926 of Maugham's collection of stories, [b:The Casuarina Tree|887838|The Casuarina Tree|W. Somerset Maugham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1179194622l/887838._SY75_.jpg|873087], based on his time in Malaya.
That brings me neatly to the fiction part of this revolving door argument.
Maugham said himself that his stories were fictionalised renderings of real people and events he came across or heard about on his travels, including the above-mentioned episode of Ethel Proudlock's trial for the murder of her lover which Maugham retold in a story called 'The Letter', changing the location from an urban setting to a rural one and altering the names of the characters. Ethel is called Leslie in his version, and her husband is called Robert, and Maugham invents a plot involving blackmail over a letter Leslie had written to the victim inviting him to call on her the night she murdered him—whereas her statement to the police had said she hadn't communicated with him in months.
If you're wondering why I'm going into such detail about that particular story, it's simply to help introduce the fan-fiction aspect of my revolving door argument.
In The House of Doors Tan Twan Eng has fictionalised Somerset Maugham's time in Malaya and has included a lot of the material from Maugham's Casuarina Tree stories, changing names of characters and details of plots as he goes along just as Maugham had done before him with real-life people and events.
And in a nice comic turn, Tan makes his invented characters comment on Maugham's habit of basing his stories on the people he meets in his travels, some of them even recognizing their 'real-life' selves in Maugham's characters. And Tan borrows the names 'Robert' and 'Leslie' from Maugham's story 'The Letter' for the main characters of his book—they are the couple with whom the fictionalised Maugham stays while visiting Penang. Tan also includes the story of Ethel Proudlock's trial that Maugham had fictionalised except that he changes the woman's name from Maugham's 'Leslie' back to the real-life name Ethel, and invents a different motive for the blackmail plot Maugham had come up with.
And to extend the door analogy, Tan designed his book to swing between two points of view. Like two half-panels of a double door (a double door features in the plot), the chapters alternate between a first-person narrative by Lesley and a third person narrative from the point of view of Somerset Maugham, called Willie in the story. Tan must have enjoyed fictionalising Maugham who had fictionalised so many real people in his work. His depiction of Maugham makes me feel that he holds him in very high regard but I did wonder about the real depth of his respect for the British author. From time to time, the writing in the 'Willie' chapters has a heavy-handed quality whereas the 'Lesley' chapters don't have that quality at all. I wondered if Tan might be commenting discreetly on Maugham's own style which I've found a bit laboured in some of his books, and especially in the stories in The Casuarina Tree.
Here's a few examples from The House of Doors :
He orbited the table to the windows.
And this one from a different scene:
‘It’s twice the size of Light’s tomb,’ said Willie as he completed his perambulation.
Is it only me who finds such phrasing ridiculous. Could it be deliberate on Tan's part?
What is definitely deliberate is the way Tan has modeled his main character, Lesley, whose surname is Hamlyn, not on Maugham's murderer character called Leslie but on another character called Mrs Hamlyn from the best story in The Casuarina Tree, entitled 'P&O'. Mrs Hamlyn in that story has recently discovered that her 'baldish, stoutish' husband has a lover. Lesley Hamlyn in Tan's story discovers something similar. But whereas Tan's Mrs Hamlyn chooses to stay in Malaya, Maugham's Mrs Hamlyn decides to abandon her life in Malaya and to take a ship back to England. She is a very fine character, and her thoughts, like Tan's Lesley Hamlyn's, are always engaging. She takes an interest in another passenger who is ill and who eventually dies on the journey, and she ponders the fact that with his death, his name will be forgotten:
Mrs. Hamlyn remembered what the consul had said, that among Mr. G’s papers no letters could be found, not the name of a single friend to whom the news of his death might be sent, and she knew not why this seemed to her unbearably tragic. There was something mysterious in a man who could pass through the world in such solitariness.
That thought echoes one that Tan's Lesley Hamlyn repeats often in one form or another. Here's the first version of it: A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. And Tan gives her a further thought to complete the revolving door effect: Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.
Tan also invents a scene where Lesley and Robert Hamlyn discuss the stories in the The Casuarina Tree which they buy some years after the fictional Willie Maugham stayed with them in Penang:
Robert bought a copy of The Casuarina Tree. He read it and passed it to me, not saying a word. I opened it with more than a little trepidation...
…‘I just wish he had described me accurately.’ Robert looked down at his seated form. ‘I’m not “baldish” and “stoutish”, am I?’
I laughed. ‘He didn’t think much of my looks either.’
‘We got off lightly, I suppose—even if he did cast you as a murderess. The bloody cheek of the man.’
And we, the readers, watching the cool way Tan re-tells Maugham's stories and re-casts his characters, realise what mirrored surfaces these revolving doors have turned out to be. Tan recycles elements out of every one of the six stories in Maugham's collection in one way or another—and there are reflections from other Maugham books too. Sometimes the recycling is as slight as the mention of an egret's feather or a Gauguin painting, sometimes it's only a side-show in a larger story like the tale of a woman who leaves her husband for the doctor who is treating her. But sometimes the recycling is as weighty as the episode of two men caught in the huge waves of a bore as it flowed upriver towards their light craft. When Willie (re)tells that story to Lesley in Tan's book, Lesley thinks about the luck that saved him from certain death on that occasion:
But...what was the price for [the luck's protection]. Was he cursed to live a long, long life, only to watch all his friends and loved ones fall by the wayside? To outlive everyone, even his enemies; to witness his popularity wane, his books forgotten...
Of course Tan knows that Maugham long outlived his friends and his loved ones, and witnessed the wane of his popularity. But his books are not completely forgotten. I don't always love his writing style but I read three of his books earlier this year and Tan Twan Eng motivated me to read a fourth, The Casuarina Tree. In fact I broke off reading The House of Doors after the second chapter (a Willie chapter that didn't appeal to me) and picked up the Maugham story collection that had been mentioned by Lesley in the retrospective piece at the beginning of Tan's book. I didn't love the first story in Maugham's book either so I went back to Tan's book for a bit, but then swung back to Maugham's and continued like that until I finished them both. I might not have finished either without the other. For me they were two panels of the same door. They each benefitted enormously from the other.