The House of Doors

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What does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts, long pauses, or sudden bursts of activity? There is so much to love: history, topography….the complexities of betrayal, adultery, murder, friendships, marriages, art, literature, music, philosophers, poets, scholars, political strife, corruption, race, gender, secrets, sexuality, illness, death, loss, love…

The novel was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and listed among notable fiction works in 2023 by The Washington Post and The Financial Times. Within these layers of the storyline are many different strands. There is the intrigue of the murder trial, insight into Maugham’s life and Sun Yat Sen’s, and the lives of Europeans, Straits Chinese, Malays and others in Penang at this time. The writing is excellent, although I occasionally found descriptive passages a little overdone and convoluted, and it held my interest completely throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the only reason it’s not a 5 star read for me is due to very minor issues such as this.The House of Doors is a 2023 historical novel by Tan Twan Eng, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. The novel, set in the 1920s British colony of the Federated Malay States, tells the stories of the local residents and visitors, including a fictionalized version of William Somerset Maugham. There’s a gap of 10 years between the publication of The House of Doors and your previous book - did you always anticipate it would take a long time to write this one? Tan Twan Eng provides an extensive bibliography of the books used in his research which he lists in his Afterword.

It feels wonderful, especially when my last book was published almost eleven years ago. The House of Doors was an extremely difficult book for me to write, and there were many occasions when I wanted to abandon it. Nothing would work, nothing was cohering. But I felt driven by the characters and the story, and I refused to give up on it.When the World’s Most Famous Writer Visits a Hotbed of Amorous Intrigue, by James Wood, The New Yorker, November 6, 2023. From the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption. Listen, I just can't with this Booker longlist: Sure, this is a decent historical novel based on real events, but it's far, far removed from any aesthetic decision that would indicate that postmodernism ever happened and from any plot points that are of heightened relevance for the social and political climate we live in today. This wouldn't bother me so much if the whole list wasn't such a mess, I guess, but alas, I'm annoyed. Willie has other problems besides his marriage … he suffers a huge financial loss — and his health is failing as well.

I begin with the main characters. I work out what is it that they are seeking. I always know the ending, although getting there is another matter entirely. With this novel, I even knew what the concluding sentence would be; every other word and sentence preceding it was directed, like an arrow fired from a bow, towards that final sentence. I found each time a new door was opened on a new part of the story, fascinating, and the prose is delightful. A fictional world, that, if it ever existed, only existed for few people, for a short period of time, between two world wars and was supported by all the excesses of colonialism.The characters, unfortunately, feel a bit hollow, or like playthings for the author to dictate his story through; perhaps because Maugham is a real person and thus there's only so much creative liberty Eng can take with him—or maybe because the emphasis on playing intertextually with Maugham's works overshadowed Eng's own themes and explorations. Ironically, the one character who felt the most intriguing, Ethel, is the one we only hear about occasionally and mostly at the end of the novel. I loved The Garden of Evening Mists so I was delighted to have the opportunity to read this and I wasn’t disappointed. This is very good storytelling with multiple layers of interest and the bonus of being based on actual events. Lesley missed her garden — the trees she planted - flowers, shrubs, their high ceilings in Cassowary House, her old busy life of the different committees she was on, but with time, she did adjust realizing she no longer cared about those things. The Unfinished Revolution: Sun Yat-Sen and the Struggle for Modern China by Tjio Kayloe (Marshall Cavendish, 2017)

W. Somerset Maugham, the famous novelist was an old friend of Robert’s. Robert and Lesley call him Willie. Writing for The Guardian in a mixed review, critic Xan Brooks stated: "Sun, in his way, is as much a storyteller as Maugham. But his revolutionary adventure feels undercooked and imported. We view it via Lesley, the white colonial wife, and her vision of events is partial and obscured." [2] Brooks also stated that the eclectic storylines in the novel sometimes reduce the overall quality, stating "The sheer weight of its interests sometimes slows it down". I launched into The House of Doors enthusiastically because I was in the mood for some historical fiction set in the heyday of the British Empire. Also, Somerset Maugham intrigues me even if he has a penchant for describing female characters variously as frivolous and hysterical/ broad and dumpy or pretty yet oddly unattractive, but that's the 1920s for you. The Booker judges described The House of Doors as ‘historical fiction at its finest’. Were you inspired by any other writers of historical fiction while writing the book?The House of Doors is partly a biographical novel, based on a few facts of William Somerset Maughm's life. It depicts the creative process, how literature and reality intersect, and the clash between mundane everyday life and the writer's creativity. An interesting coincidence: I was thinking how Colm Tóibín’s route in his biography of Thomas Mann, The Magician, was different, and in the evening, I read in The Guardian his enthusiastic opinion on this book: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is fascinating, engrossing and has given me infinite pleasure. I couldn't agree more. The dynamics of power of that period: between men and women, between the ruler and the ruled, between people of different races and cultures. I’m fascinated by how East and West clashed, merged, pulled apart; how they enriched but also damaged each other. Sadly, all these issues are still very relevant today. We did not know very much about one another then, and I feel we still don’t today.