This beautiful novel takes place in Penang and centers around novelist W. Somerset Maugham (Willie) when he stays with old friend Robert and his wife Lesley as he gathers stories for the book that will end up being The Casuarina Tree. The prose in this novel is breathtaking and the descriptions of Penang make the setting feel like a character. Most of the love stories in this book are underpinned with pain and I was left with a bittersweet ache at the end of my reading. I am still deciding if I want to read The Casuarina tree too or just enjoy the spell that The House of Doors has left on me. I am looking forward to reading more books by this author. Tan Twan Eng’s novel The House of Doors makes an undeniably compelling tale out of one of the 20th century’s greatest political convulsions, while mixing it with a piece of literary history that is just as complex and beguiling. William Somerset Maugham’s short stories are still popular today, but his initial popularity in literary London relied much on his travels to Asia and the Far East in the Twenties. Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the early 1920s, when the British writer William Somerset Maugham and his secretary (and lover) Gerald Haxton visit the coastal province of Penang, Malaysia, as the guests of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn. Book Genre: Asia, Asian Literature, Fiction, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature

The anticipated novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, exploring love, betrayal and morality in 1920s Penang.It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steey wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she sees him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.From Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors is a masterful novel of public morality and private truth a century ago. The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng – eBook Details hanging from the ceiling beams were more doors, carefully spaced apart and suspended on wires so thin they seemed to be floating in the air. We walked between the rows of painted doors, our shoulders and elbows setting them spinning slowly. Each door pirouetted open to reveal another set of doors, and I had the dizzying sensation that I was walking down the corridors of a constantly shifting maze, each pair of doors opening into another passageway, and another, giving me no inkling of where I would eventually emerge.”Oh, that’s just Monty,’ said Robert. ‘He showed up here a few years ago. Takes his daily dip in the Warburtons’ pool next door. So what’s on the cards today, old chap? Lesley’ll be delighted to show you the sights.’ 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.

They currently have none other than famous novelist and old friend of Robert’s, W. Somerset Maugham (whom they affectionately call Willie) staying with them. Tan Twan Eng spins a tale of colonial scandal and intrigue in The House of Doors . . . solid, well-crafted . . . engrossing. 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 Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review ourLife here for us was not much different from our old one in Penang. Robert and I had our own bedrooms, and every morning we would meet for breakfast on the verandah. Afterwards he would adjourn to his study to work on his memoirs – he had begun writing them shortly after we moved here. There was not much to keep me busy around the house. Liesbet, the wife of one of the Coloured farm workers, cooked and cleaned for us. She was a few years older than me, a fat woman with broad flanks and a round smiling face which reminded me of the Malays in Penang. To fill my days I decided to create a garden in front of the house. The soil was as dry as the powder in my compact, but with the help of Liesbet’s son Pietman, I persevered with it. This, for me, was a beautiful piece of historical fiction. I've read several Maugham books and stories over the years and for some reason it never occurred to me that they were loosely based on people he'd met. This book, in a way, is an homage to Maugham. It involves stories of love and devotion - both real and fictional. Tan Twen Eng manages to evoke a feeling of the last century and its attitudes to homosexuality, adultery and male dominance. I have not read Maugham’s The Casaurina Tree. I’m not sure if reading it would have deepened my appreciation for this book. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

One could argue that these nods are intentional – the writing leaning on Somerset Maugham’s, the romantic subplot leaning on the traditions of Victorian fiction – but unfortunately these factors hampered my immersion in the story. The way Tan Twan Eng deftly weaves in some elements of Maugham's style so that it almost sounds like a pastiche and adds some elements from Maugham's books, some of the realia, is just extraordinary. Since I've started The Casuarina Tree, a collection of Maugham's short stories set mostly in Malaysia, which inspired The House of Doors, I appreciate Tan Twan Eng's talent even more. Not just talent. How much work, time and research must have gone into this novel and, at the same time, it seems so effortless, so understated, so smooth, so subtle. Robert and I had uprooted ourselves from Penang at the end of 1922, sailing on a P&O liner to Cape Town. We stayed a pleasant fortnight in a hotel by the sea before taking the train to Beaufort West, a little town three hundred or so miles to the northeast. Bernard, Robert’s cousin, was a sheep farmer, and he had built us a modest bungalow on his land. The bungalow, whitewashed and capped with a corrugated tin roof painted a dark green, stood on a high broad ridge. From the deep and shady verandah – I would never get used to the locals calling it a ‘stoep’, I told myself – we had an unbroken vista of the mountains to the north. These mountains had been formed by the dying ripples of the earth’s upheavals an eternity ago, upheavals that had begun far to the south at the very tip of the continent.

Attempting to offer up a more detail book report here….but be clear ….the best thing I can say to others is “just read it!!!” If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. I can certainly see some things that Tan Twan Eng tried to do. For example, it doesn't really surprise me that a book about 'Willie' Somerset Maugham isn't actually about him or only about him. This happens in a lot of his own books. He's the author who, no matter how interesting a character he is, needs to find another story to tell. Eileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman 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.

Ai, that’s not funny, Bernard,’ his wife said. ‘Coincidentally, our GP in the dorp disappeared that same morning,’ Bernard continued. ‘Left his wife behind. Neither hair nor hide of him has ever been seen again.’ 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. His body felt waterlogged as he pushed himself up against the headboard. He had been dreaming: a great wave had swept him overboard into a turbulent river; muddy water poured down his gullet, flooding his lungs and weighting him down into the sunless depths. It was at that point that he had jerked awake in a frenzy of apnoeic snorting. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.The doors spun slowly in the air, like leaves spiralling in a gentle wind, forever falling, never to touch the earth. Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur's leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer.