‘The House of Doors’ by Tan Twan Eng       (2023) – 304 pages

‘The House of Doors’ takes place on the island of Penang which is a part of the country of Malaysia today, but was part of the British colony of Malaya back in 1910 and 1921 when this story unfolds. This Malaysian novel is very much in the tradition of those British novelists whose subjects often were those far-flung British colonies when the sun never set on the Empire. A few of these novelists included Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and, yes, W. Somerset Maugham. In fact, W. Somerset Maugham appears as one of the main characters in ‘The House of Doors’.

W. Somerset Maugham is a writer whose literary reputation was much higher forty years ago than it is today, and I read a lot of his fiction back then, especially his short stories. His two most famous stories, “Rain” and “The Letter”, have been made into movies several times. “The House of Doors” contains a fictional account of how Maugham may have gotten the idea for “The Letter”.  Maugham was a fine writer, probably too talented to be forgotten.

Sun Yat-Sen, first leader of the Republic of China, is another famous real person who appears in this novel.

In ‘The House of Doors’, W. Somerset Maugham, usually referred to as Willie here, and his “secretary” and male friend Gerald are visiting Penang and staying with Maugham’s married friends Robert and Lesley Hamlyn. Although Willie has a wife back in England he usually travels with his male friend. It soon becomes apparent that Willie and Gerald are more than just “friends”.

“I don’t just write about adultery – I write about the human weaknesses that create these unhappy marriages – cowardice, fear, selfishness, pride, hypocrisy . . . All the emotions are found within love too, you know.”

“Well, you must feel godlike, sitting in judgment over the people you put in your books.”

“I’m the last person in the world to judge anyone, Lesley,” he said quietly.

The story in ‘The House of Doors” is told through the alternating points of view of the wife Lesley and of Willie. Willie is mainly looking for story ideas for his next book of stories which will be ‘The Causarina Tree’. Meanwhile Lesley has the more dramatic events occurring in her life as she faces questions in her marriage and looks for meaning beyond it which brings her to become closely involved with some of the dislocated Chinese people in Penang, including Sun Yat-Sen, who are striving to turn China into a republic.

“What sustained a marriage, kept it going year upon year, I realized, were the things we left unmentioned, the truths that we longed to speak forced back down our throats, back into the deepest, darkest chambers of our hearts.”

I was never bored reading ‘The House of Doors’ and found it to be a well-written interesting read. It just did not quite have that inspired spark that would have lifted it into the stratosphere.

Grade :   B+