“Where does a story begin, Willie?” I asked.
For a while he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair. “Where does a wave on the ocean begin?” he said. “Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards shore?”
“I want to tell you a story, Willie,” I said.
I’m still reading the 2023 Booker longlist, and I remain rather unimpressed with the selections; the overwhelming majority of those I’ve read are simply “just okay.” (Western Lane is my hopeful to win.) They’re perfectly fine, but the books nominated for the Booker shouldn’t be just “perfectly fine.” Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors (Bloomsbury 2023) falls into that lukewarm “perfectly fine” category. Eng is no stranger to the Booker prize; this is his third time on the longlist, and he was a judge of the 2023 Booker International prize. He can certainly write, and this novel does have that “Booker” quality, but I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with Tom Crewe’s The New Life – in my opinion, a better selection for the prize. Crewe’s novel has similar themes, is also based on historical events and people, and soars where The House of Doors flounders.
In 1921, Lesley Hamlyn is living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang when her husband’s old friend, none other than famed author Somerset Maugham, comes for an extended visit. “Willie,” as they call him, brings his young and attractive assistant, Gerald. Lesley is quite disturbed to realize they are “homosexuals,” a word she can barely bring herself to say. What transpires is a fictional account of how Maugham was inspired to write The Casuarina Tree, a collection of short stories set in the Federated Malay states during the 1920s.
Lesley tells Willie about her best friend, Ethel, who had been charged with murder after killing a man she’d accused of trying to rape her. Ethel’s trial in Kuala Lumpur in 1911 actually happened and was quite the tantalizing drama. Lesley also talks about her relationship with the revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen (also a real figure). Eng plays with the timeline so that the trial and Dr. Sun Yat Sen being in Malay all happen at the same time. Lesley also reveals her husband’s infidelity and sexuality as well as her own affair.
The novel should be a riveting ride of court room drama, colonialism, scandal, revolution, love, lust and duty. But it takes forever to get the heart of the story. Lesley is boring, unlikeable, and unauthentic. Gerald is a caricature. Absolutely beautiful language, but eh.
Booker count: 7 of 13.
**One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Shakespeare or his works. Willie notices Robert’s Shakespeare collection, making this 5 of 7.
A Girl Named Tommi 