The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

It is sometimes difficult when reading historical fiction based on the life of a real person to know how much is purely fiction and how much is actually based on fact. In the case of The House of Doors, the most recent novel from Tan Twan Eng, I was especially curious about this, as the novel is about the time W. Somerset Maugham spent in Penang in 1921.

The House of Doors is a beautifully written novel, full of the exotic richness and lush landscape of the place where it is set. The early 1900s in a British Colonial settlement in Malaya. The novel begins and ends with Lesley Hamlyn. It is now 1947, and Lesley is in Doornfontein, South Africa, where she receives a parcel containing a book. The Casuarina Tree by W. Somerset Maugham. And, she thinks of the time, 25 years earlier, when Willie Maugham and his companion, Gerald, stayed with Lesley and her husband, Robert, at their home in Penang.

It was the spring of 1921. Willie was a well know novelist and playwright. Robert Hamlyn was a magistrate in the British Territory of Malaya. Lesley was born in Malaya and though thoroughly British she had never been to England. This place is her home, a place she has no desire to leave. A place where her sons were born and cared for by the woman who also cared for Lesley when she was a child.

Willie and Lesley spend a considerable amount of time together. He is curious about this woman. He is always looking for a story and it seems she may have one. A story it turns out, about an event that took place in 1910, when a woman was accused of murdering a man who, she claimed, attempted rape. A woman who was a friend to Lesley. As this story is revealed we learn more about both Willie and Gerald, and Lesley and Robert. We also learn about the rise of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen and his efforts to overthrow the Emperor, and to establish the Republic of China.

The story meanders between chapters set in 1910 and Lesley’s life as a young wife and mother, her support of her friend during her trial for murder, and her own long held secrets. Secrets slowly revealed to Willie Maugham in 1926. Secrets that will be re-told in the stories he writes about this time and place.

At some point in their conversation, Willie says to Lesley “We will be remembered through our stories”. True of both the author and his subjects, no matter how much is fiction and how much is fact.

I have a row of orange Penguin paperbacks on my bookshelf, many of them by W. Somerset Maugham whose books I had a passion for in my late teens. Others I later purchased in lovely hardcover editions with his trademark symbol on each book. After reading The House of Doors, I am ready to read my way through Maugham’s books once again. And, to read the earlier novels by Tan Twan Eng!