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!

North Woods by Daniel Mason

 Get ready to read a wonderful crazy new book by Daniel Mason. North Woods was published this fall and knowing how much I enjoyed Daniel Mason’s earlier books this new one went right to the top of my “to read” pile and rescued me from reading yet another mystery novel just to pass the time.

 North Woods begins in the 1700’s in Massachusetts, continues through the American Revolution, Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, throughout the following years until the present time.

 The story weaves in and out of time with characters following one after the other, all with some connection to a cabin, which becomes a house, added on to again and again over the years it stands in the remote countryside.

 This is a rollicking story of murder and mayhem. There are sisters, always together, even in death, forevermore. There is a minister who sees biblical events in his own landscape, among his own parishioners. There is the dissemination of seeds from Europe into the American landscape, apple seeds among them. There are runaway slaves and those who hunt them. There is a writer and a painter, correspondents. There is deceit. There is a séance. There is a Catamount – a puma, a cougar, a mountain lion, a panther. There is a button manufacturer. There is a crime writer. There is a dog. There is love.

 There is change not only to the human population but also to the landscape with the passage of time. There is disease, the destruction of the Elm trees. And worse to come.

 I laughed out loud. I was taken by surprise – after believing what I was reading to find it was all fiction. Of course, it is all fiction, of the most wonderful kind. North Woods is so unlike Daniel Mason’s earlier, also wonderful, novels, but every bit as good. You’ll be lost in a beautifully written scene. I think the author must have had a great time writing this novel, and what a gift to a reader to be swept along on the wake of this tale of a place, in its glory and neglect. And its people who, over many generations, inhabit a house they never really leave.

 North Woods. Beautiful writing combined with a fantastic story – a great read!

Girl in White by Sue Hubbard

 I read two books by Sue Hibbard this summer – Flatlands and Rainsongs, both of which I loved reading. As I did Girl in White, first published in 2012, and recently re-issued.

 Sue Hubbard is a well-established British writer, poet, and art critic, having written widely over more than three decades. Her novels all, in some way, concern art and artists, though Girl in White focuses on a real woman and her life as an artist.

 Paula Modersohn-Becker was born in 1876 and died in 1907 shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Mathilde Modersohn.  We know this from the beginning of the novel, when the story begins with Mathilde who is, herself, pregnant. She has come to Worpswede, a village in rural Germany, where she was born. It is now 1933. Mathilde is alone, her lover, an American musician, a Jew, has fled to America as Germany appears to be heading toward another war. Other Jewish artists, writers and musicians among others are also getting out of Berlin – out of Germany.

 Chapters alternate between what is happening in Mathilde’s life, and her memories, and the life of her mother. Paula was raised as one of a large family, prosperous when she was a child but less so after her father lost his lucrative position.  Paula has been drawing, and drawn to art, since she was a child. Her family encouraged her in this, she had various teachers while living at home, and went on to study art more and more seriously as she grew older. It was not, however, considered that she would become a professional artist in the way a man might have done. Paula felt differently about her future, and did all that she could to develop her talent and be true to herself and her art.

 At this time many of the men whose names we know had patrons who purchased their work, and galleries that represented their art to the public. Even then for most it was not an easy or secure life. And, there is no getting away from the fact that women were expected to be wives and mothers. Leaving even less time in their lives to devote to their artwork.

 Girl in White gives us a picture of the life and times of one woman who desired, above all, to spend her days at work making art. I did not know anything of Paula Modersohn-Becker and am now very glad to have “discovered” her work through reading fiction.

 Doing a little research after reading this novel, I found that the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker is well represented in major public art galleries around the world and is placed among other artists in the Modernist Movement of the early 20th century.

The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves

It is always exciting to see a listing for a new novel from Ann Cleeves, this fall it is The Raging Storm, the third in her Two Rivers series.

Ann Cleeves is well known for her mystery novels, the Vera Stanhope series, and the Shetland series, both of which have been made into television series. Read, and watched around the world.

The earlier books were set in Shetland and islands, and Northumberland. The Two Rivers series is set in North Devon, in the area around Barnstaple. Just by chance while reading The Raging Storm in Newfoundland this fall, we were in the midst of planning a trip to England – to the southwest Cornwall, Dorset, and Devon – including North Devon. I look forward to spending some time next year in the place where the fictional Matthew Venn and his husband, Jonathan, live and work.

The Raging Storm begins with a storm. The local volunteer lifeboat crew is out in response to a call about a boat in distress near Scully Cove. What they find is an inflatable boat with a naked body inside. No other boat in sight or anyone in distress. This is when Matthew Venn is called to investigate. All of this in the fictional seaside village of Greystone – where Matthew grew up with parents who were among the Brethren. A happy time for Matthew as a child, but a world he left in every way when older.

The story involves those who live in the village, and a man who has recently returned. Jeremy Rosco left when young, inherited a certain amount of wealth and made more. He became an adventurer, travelling the Amazon, sailing single-handedly around the world, a television celebrity. A man who may have made more than a few enemies along the way.

There is the local doctor, and his wife. A young mother of a chronically ill child. The older generation include the Commodore of the yacht club, a magistrate. His wife, and others of their circle who grew up with privilege. All of them become possible suspects when murder is believed to have been committed.

We also have Matthew Venn’s colleagues, including Jen Rafferty who is a single mother of teenagers, juggling life at home and work. Not so easy for her to drop everything at home and move into the Maiden’s Prayer, the local pub where the investigating team has set up shop.

What follows from first to last is a mystery novel that has all we expect – a cast of characters who are both realistic and interesting, a detective who has a few issues but is a decent person doing a difficult job. A certain amount of danger that may imperil the lives of the good guys.

There is more than one storm in The Raging Storm – all revealed at the end. After two previous novels we have come to know, and care for, Matthew Venn. Now we wait for the next!

The Adversary by Michael Crummey

I carried a copy of Michael Crummey’s most recent novel The Adversary to Newfoundland with me this fall. I wanted to read it near the location where I thought it was set, the Mockbeggar Plantation, now part of the town of Bonavista on the tip of the Bonavista Peninsula. Only after reading The Adversary, did I learn that Michael Crummey simply used the name and made the place, as we come to know it, out of his own imagination.

This is a novel full of many characters who seem unbelievable, but the author writes in his acknowledgements of “looting and pilfering” from a variety of historical sources. And, I have heard him say when asked about a particularly strange scene in an earlier novel that it was something he was told as having actually happened.

I always learn something about language when I read a book by Michael Crummey and this one is no exception. He also admits to “shameless pillaging” from a volume titled A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Vulgar meaning the language of thieves and prostitutes, much of it shocking to read.

The Adversary is a companion piece to Michael Crummey’s The Innocents, taking place in a community along an isolated shoreline. We meet a very different pair of siblings, Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines, the adult children of a local Merchant. These two hate each other – always have and always will. Abe Strapp is a despicable man, there is not one bit of goodness or kindness in him. He and his sister are certainly adversaries, and for some time I thought she was the more human of the two – that he was the devil. But, in the end, they are each as cruel as the other.

There are also characters whose welfare we care about. Some among the Society of Friends, the Quakers, who have many members in the community. There are young people, some who have come as indentured servants, who want only to live in peace ad make a life for themselves and their families. As they cross paths with Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines we fear for their well-being.

This is novel is set in a time and place of hardship for its people – few resources, primitive medical care, lack of nutrition, more often than not. Destructive storms on land and sea. Life in an unforgiving landscape with little control over their day to day lives, or their future. There is pack ice delaying the fishing season, and late planting. There are privateers, there are fires, public whippings, amputations, storms – all to be endured. At one point near the end of the novel when yet another brutal scene involves the young people, I thought in anguish “can’t anything nice happen to anyone?” In the end, I felt hopeful that the generations to come after Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines will find a better life – perhaps there will be another novel to follow their future lives – or they will stay within the pages of The Adversary. And therein is the power of fiction – and the wonder of the writing of Michael Crummey. The Adversary – a great novel.