The House of Doors: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

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From the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption. A writer,’ Robert said. ‘A very famous one. An old friend, actually. He stayed with us in Penang. He’s promised to visit us here. We’ll introduce you to him when he comes.’

Well, one of these days, then,’ said Robert. ‘The old girl’s quite the expert on our island’s history, Willie. Knows everything about the place. Used to give our friends from abroad tours of the town. We showed that German writer around when he was in Penang – what was his name, dear? Hesse, wasn’t it? Yes. Hermann Hesse.’ Breathing new life into dead authors has become a popular fictional activity. Resurrecting Somerset Maugham at the height of his fame and exotic travels, The House of Doors is an outstanding instance of this trend.It’s based true events. It’s a work of fiction; yet it features characters and events drawn from history…a murder in 1911 which Eng set in 1910 to coincide with Sun Yat-Sen’s extended stay in Penang. The House of Doors is Tan’s first novel since 2012’s Booker-shortlisted The Garden of Evening Mists and shares many of its themes. It’s a book about memory, loss and cultural dissonance; a high-flown tragedy that sideslips through the decades and passes the narrative baton between Lesley and Maugham. While Tan – born in Penang of Straits Chinese descent – is deliberately writing in the voice of the oppressor, he generally does so with care, conscious of the limits of his characters’ language and worldview. If colonial Malaysia is a pastiche of middle-class England, his drama is its costumed morality play. Daily routines take place when Willie and Gerald are visiting. Willie spends a few hours a day writing in his room. There are also hours spent at the beach for Willie and Gerald…. Also, do a Google photo search on each of the particulars to familiarize oneself with what everybody looks like (it enhances one's enjoyment!) - and listen to this (which is a recurring musical motif throughout): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p32vl.... Tan Twan Eng's new novel reads like a warm and quiet summer evening. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband Robert are a well-to-do white couple living in Penang in the 1920's when Robert's friend, the celebrated writer W. Somerset Maugham (whom they call Willie) comes to stay with them. The outwardly successful Maugham is in dire financial straits and knows he must write to keep his creditors at bay, so he looks to local society gossip for inspiration. As Willie spends more time talking to Lesley, he begins to suspect that she may have had an affair with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, who had spent time in Penang over a decade ago when he was a revolutionary drumming up support to overthrow China's imperial dynasty. But as Lesley gradually reveals some of the secrets she's been keeping, Willie finds that the stories he gets from her are not at all the ones he expected to find.

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.Such a lyrical novel about history, love, the mores of the era, and the love of landscape. I did not skip one word in this novel. It is another beautiful offering from Eng. Thank you Netgalley! The House of Doors is brilliantly observed and full of memorable characters. It is so well-written, everything so effortlessly dramatized, the narrative so well structured and paced, that this is a book that will mesmerize readers far into the future.” ―Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician How perfectly this house seemed to reflect the story being told. No direct way through it but one that is navigated step by step. The heart of the story is told by Lesley each evening in retrospect as she tells it to Maugham over their evening drinks alone in the garden. She reveals secrets no one else has ever known and the reader listens along with Maugham to her beautiful but heart-breaking story.

The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our Maugham is a here a passive character; he is a vessel through which we get to listen to Lesley Hamlyn’s secrets from her past. The writer proves to be an excellent listener, which prompts the disillusioned Lesley to share confidences about events surrounding the visit of the Chinese revolutionary, Sun Yat-sen to Penang and a famous murder. Both the murder and the visit were real events, although the former took place in 1911. The author puts them together to serve his plotting objectives, to positive results, I think. Tan Twan Eng spins a tale of colonial scandal and intrigue in The House of Doors . . . solid, well-crafted . . . engrossing. The following is from Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors . Eng was born in Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur's leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer. His debut novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007. The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town. The House of Doors is his third novel.In the 20's Maugham was an actual well known author and this story is based on many of the truths of his life. An additional focus of the story is that of Lesley's friend Ethel who is incarcerated after she shoots a man attempting to rape her. 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.