I’ve read and enjoyed both of Tan Twan Eng’s previous novels, The Gift of Rain (2007) and the Booker-shortlisted The Garden of Evening Mists (2012, see my review) and his newly released The House of Doors didn’t disappoint.
With a blend of fictionalised real-life people and characters from imagination, it is a novel of multiple betrayals, not the least of which was the use that (the real-life) W. Somerset Maugham made of the confidences of people who welcomed him into their homes in Penang. The story begins in the isolation of a sheep farm at Doornfontein 15 miles from Beaufort West in the Cape Province of South Africa, where in 1947 the central character Lesley Hamlyn has exiled herself from her birthplace in Malaysia. It is not until late in the book that her betrayals are revealed.
Flashbacks take the reader back to 1921 when Maugham, known as Willie to his friends, is a houseguest at the Hamlyn home in Penang. Lesley’s husband Robert is a barrister, and they live a comfortable colonial lifestyle with a social life to match. Theirs is a more liberal crowd than one might expect: Lesley is fluent in the languages of her birthplace, Robert’s partner is a Chinese called Peter Ong, and they entertain locals of their class despite some mild disapproval. But it is only when Maugham gains Lesley’s trust and she breaks a decade’s silence that the story reveals her relationship with Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese statesman who led the revolution to oust the Qing dynasty but was in Malaysia in 1910. Initially, Lesley merely assisted with translations of his essays, but soon both the Howards became enmeshed in Sun Yat Sen’s fundraising efforts among the Straits Chinese. And Somerset Maugham suspects that there was more to it than that…
Maugham is travelling with his secretary Gerald Haxton, and it takes a while for it to dawn on Lesley that although Maugham has a wife and child back in the UK, they are lovers too. The trials and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde has spooked many English homosexuals into marriage for the sake of deflecting suspicion, and Maugham’s betrayal of Syrie Wellcome is not the only one in this novel. Maugham’s thematic concerns of marital strife and adultery are at the heart of The House of Doors too.
The most dramatic betrayal concerns Lesley’s best friend, the (real-life) Ethel Proudlock who is on trial for murder of a man who visited her at night when her husband was not at home. It was this scandal that became one of Maugham’s short stories in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. He later turned the story into a play, The Letter, and eventually a film was made as well. I suspect that the narrative tension in The House of Doors depends to some extent on not knowing anything about this case or how it was resolved. I’d never heard of it, so I found the plot compelling, if a little melodramatic — but it was apparently based on real-life events, so we must not complain about that!
Well, of course I must now read the story that became a cause-célèbre in The Casuarina Tree. I have a lovely hardback set of Maugham’s short stories, I hope it’s in included in that collection…
Author: Tan Twan Eng
Title: The House of Doors
Cover design: Rafaela Romaya
Publisher: Canongate, 2023
ISBN: 9781838858308, pbk., 306 pages
Source: Kingston Library
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Oh, I’m looking forward to this one! It’s in my 20 Books of Summer/Winter reading pile! I loved his Gardens of Evening Mist novel
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By: kimbofo on June 16, 2023
at 11:47 am
Excellent! You will note that I’ve been careful about spoilers so it’s safe to read the review.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 16, 2023
at 12:19 pm
Oh, that sounds interesting. Maugham really wasn’t the nicest person, from what I’ve read…
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By: kaggsysbookishramblings on June 16, 2023
at 8:50 pm
Maybe not. But we have to remember that the discrimination against gays meant that he and others like him had no option but to lead a double life. The strain of that, over a lifetime, must have been terrible.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 16, 2023
at 9:19 pm
Oh indeed – we can’t judge the past on our modern standards. It’s mainly his behaviour to his wife that I find fairly shocking…
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By: kaggsysbookishramblings on June 16, 2023
at 11:09 pm
The book is fairly sympathetic to him, offering both 3rd person narration about him, and Lesley’s 1st person narration. I have no idea if it was factually true, but the book says that it was The Wife who engineered Gerald being (legally) unable to return ever to England because she had friends in high places and she outed him.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 12:16 pm
This sounds very interesting indeed; must look it up.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 16, 2023
at 9:36 pm
And I haven’t even mentioned the surprising reason why it’s called The House of Doors!
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By: Lisa Hill on June 16, 2023
at 9:58 pm
Stop… or I’ll have to log into Amazon/Flipkart (the latter’s an online shopping platform in India) this instant :D I did check NetGalley once I read your review but found it had been archived already.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 16, 2023
at 10:07 pm
I’m sure I miss out on a lot of interesting books because I don’t use Net Galley, but OTOH if they’re any good, someone reviews them and then I can usually borrow them from the library.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 12:28 pm
True; I’ve always lived on university or institute campuses most of my childhood (both my parents are academics) so the library was always a few minutes away, but from where we are now (suburbs), it is really impossible to access one on a regular basis, which is what makes me grateful for sites like NetGalley and Edelweiss.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 17, 2023
at 1:35 pm
I think that just as everyone ought to have a school within a reasonable distance, everyone ought also to have a library. But in the digital age, libraries have to reinvent themselves to appeal to people who don’t read, or they don’t survive. It’s a shame.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 2:59 pm
True. Schools are not an issue here, if anything the opposite, we have at 10 in the vicinity (4 of these one can walk to even) plus some kindergartens and day care places. Even universities are not terribly far (though the one I attended was an hour’s commute either way, and then for my masters and phd, only slightly closer than that).But while there are excellent libraries in the city, where we are is kind of in the middle of two cities so physically getting to either is about an hour at least. Some do offer digital services of course.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 17, 2023
at 4:46 pm
In the suburbs, schools are not an issue. But in the bush, there can be quite a distance and they have school buses to get the children to and from.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 4:56 pm
Oh, I assume that’s the case here too, in more rural spaces. But things are improving. Our discussion also made me wonder about the kind of reading material one gets at school libraries these days. I was trying to recall my own but honestly couldn’t remember using it very much except bringing home a book a week. I always had the uni/institute library and both my parents cards so my stack every week came from there, and I didn’t much bother with school. But for others I’m sure it must have been a more important resource.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 17, 2023
at 5:01 pm
My school (that is, the last one of went to, of 11 that I can remember) had a library only for matriculation students. But my father took us to the municipal library every Saturday where we always borrowed to the max (and shared each other’s borrowings) so we were never short of books. It’s never occurred to me to find out what other students read, besides the set texts…
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 8:05 pm
I’ve been to 5 and I think I remember the last only having texts but I can’t be sure. The one before that had plenty of fiction as well, which we were allowed to borrow one a week. But it would be interesting to see what percent of children are reading beyond prescribed texts, and what they are reading.
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 17, 2023
at 8:46 pm
It would indeed. Only schools that have librarians would know that…
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By: Lisa Hill on June 19, 2023
at 7:19 pm
And yes, partly I think because readers are fewer, the scope for libraries expanding their reach or new ones opening is much reduced. The majority seems to want quick fixes when it comes to information if at all they want it. Entertainment usually the loud kind is the preference
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By: mallikabooks15 on June 17, 2023
at 4:48 pm
Yes, it’s sad…
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 4:54 pm
Im
Hoping get this from
Library like Maugham and have enjoyed the other book I read by him
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By: winstonsdad on June 17, 2023
at 2:50 am
Your comments reminds me: an Australian author, Miranda Riwoe, wrote a novella drawn from one of the minor characters in Maugham’s The Four Dutchmen. You probably won’t be able to get a copy in the UK, but it’s worth reading my review for a different perspective on the travellers who wrote about ‘the Indies’. See https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/10/23/the-fish-girl-2017-by-mirandi-riwoe-2017-co-winner-of-seizure-viva-la-novella-prize/
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 12:31 pm
It’s available in the UK because that’s where I bought my copy a few years back.
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By: kimbofo on June 18, 2023
at 12:06 am
I’ll look this up see if it is out in uk
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By: winstonsdad on June 18, 2023
at 1:51 am
Now you have me curious to find out more about Maugham. Don’t you love it when one book leads you down a rabbit hole into something entirely different?
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By: BookerTalk on June 17, 2023
at 3:37 am
Yes. That collection of his short stories is waving at me from the TBR!
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 12:32 pm
I loved both Tan Twan Eng’s previous novels, this sounds fascinating, complex and compelling and particularly appeals because of Somerset Maugham appearing as a character.
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By: heavenali on June 17, 2023
at 4:17 am
Yes. The only downslide is that Eng takes a long time between novels so we’ll have to wait a while for the next one.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 17, 2023
at 12:36 pm
It’s available in the UK because that’s where I bought my copy a few years back.
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By: kimbofo on June 18, 2023
at 12:06 am
The Fish Girl? In London, that’s surprising!
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By: Lisa Hill on June 18, 2023
at 12:07 am
Yep… just double-checked on Amazon and it’s listed as both paperback and Kindle. I must have bought mine not long after release
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By: kimbofo on June 18, 2023
at 12:10 am
Well, that’s excellent! It a book with some power because of the way it brings us the other side of the Author-in-the-South-Seas story.
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By: Lisa Hill on June 18, 2023
at 12:14 am
This sounds very interesting indeed. By the way, the film of “The Letter” starred Bette Davis and I remember it as being very good indeed.
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By: Eleanor Dilley on June 18, 2023
at 1:51 pm
I love those B&W movies… and I generally don’t like the sexed-up remakes!
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By: Lisa Hill on June 18, 2023
at 4:54 pm
Me too! 😊
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By: Eleanor Dilley on June 18, 2023
at 5:30 pm
I have just picked up a copy of this book from the library, and am looking forward to reading it.
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By: Jennifer on June 21, 2023
at 1:59 pm