Spoiler alert. If you have not read the book and do not want to know about the story yet. You might stop reading here, and come back later after you read the book.
The setting of the story is in Penang year 1921 and 1910. The house of doors was a place where infidelity happened. The wife Lesley was hurt by her husband Robert’s infidelity, did the very same thing with someone else’s husband. Just because one’s things were stolen does not mean that one has the right to steal other people’s things. No matter how beautiful the story was told, this is just wrong. Of course the affair had to be a secret. Until 10 years later, when the famous writer W. Somerset Maugham came and stayed with Lesley and Robert, she revealed the story to the writer.
This book is very well written. An intriguing story that had my attention from the beginning to the end. Different elements weave wonderfully together like a complex yet harmonious embroidery art. Literature (W. Somerset Maugham), music (Reynaldo Hahn), art (water paintings of old Penang shophouses), nature (the whispering tree), politic (Sun Yat Sen), fashion (Baba Nyonya’s traditional attire), food (Belachan), crime (Ethel), feminism (women participating in revolution), and Malaysia.
I was born and grew up in Malaysia, I will certainly flip through the book again and again for my beloved scenery.
“How I ached for the monsoon skies of the equator, for the ever-changing tints of its chameleon sea.”
Maybe it is just me do not like the double life and the lack of honesty, there is no one character in the book that I can laugh with or to cry with. This is rather very personal, the book is still one of the finest books I read recently, it just does not touch my heart. I think I will conclude my review with this quote from the book.
“It was an eventful life – but it lacked one essential element.”
“And what’s that?”
“Simple, really. There’s no love interest in his life. And a story without love … well, it just wouldn’t work.”
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
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