Review: The House of Doors (by Tan Twan Eng)

My Rating: 4 stars

I've wanted to read Tan Twan Eng's works for years, ever since a few bookish friends of mine read both his previous award-winning novels and kept recommending them to me.  While I do have both of those novels on my TBR (as well as physical copies sitting on my shelf), I keep falling into the "too many books, too little time" trap and of course, in the end, I wasn't able to get to them (someday though, I am determined that I will get to all the books I've been meaning to get to!).  Anyway, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise then that when I heard Tan would have a new book out this year, I jumped at the chance to grab a copy, and while I was hoping to have read this one last month before it was actually released, getting to it now is better late than never.

One of the things I've heard that Tan is known for is the beautiful, lyrical prose that he utilizes to tell his stories.  While yes, there was definitely quite a bit of beautiful writing in this newest novel, it actually didn't permeate the entire story, at least it didn't feel so to me. I felt that some parts — especially those related to the Proudlock murder trial — were written in a simpler, more straightforward style that seemed to be a little bit at odds with the more descriptive and elegant prose in other parts. But then I later read in an article that with the trial segments, Tan was trying to hew as close to the real life unfolding of the event as possible, in which case, the more restrained, straightforward writing made sense. 

This is actually one of those books where there technically wasn't much action in terms of plot (a large part of the book was the main protagonist Lesley Hamlyn recounting a story to famous author W. Somerset Maugham) — yet at the same time, there seemed to be several threads running through the book that felt necessary to keep track of. 

Essentially, the story is a reimagining of Maugham's trip to Penang in the 1920s and what he learns while there becoming the inspiration for one of his later books, the short story collection entitled The Casuarina Tree (which was published in 1926).  While I'm familiar with Maugham as an author, since I've read a few of his previous works (my favorite of the ones I've read is The Painted Veil), I knew very little about his personal life, so I was curious how much of the way Tan depicted Maugham was fact versus fiction — which of course took me down the rabbit hole of reading up on Maugham after finishing the novel (it was fascinating to see how Tan incorporated the real life details about Maugham into the story).  Also, after finishing this novel, I immediately wanted to read The Casuarina Tree to see how Maugham actually wrote the story of the Proudlock murder and trail (which itself was based on real life events) and how much of it jived with Tan's version (I know, I'm a nerd with this kind of stuff) — though unfortunately, I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy yet.

One of the other threads that Tan wove into the book was a backstory involving the famous Chinese revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen (who really had visited Penang at the time, but in a different year).  There were also other aspects of Chinese history that Tan incorporated into the story, such as the Taiping Rebellion and the fall of the Qing dynasty.  Given the dearth of English language novels in existence that talk about such lesser known aspects of Chinese history (and actually get the facts straight to boot), I definitely appreciated what Tan did here.  Even though this particular story arc was secondary (the main arc was Maugham's visit and the story Lesley told him), it was, in my opinion, the best written part of the book (and certainly my favorite out of the several threads throughout the story).

Overall, this was quite an ambitious novel with multiple threads that made the story a tad convoluted in places, but I still enjoyed it immensely.  As I mentioned earlier, I definitely need to track down a copy of The Casuarina Tree so I can study the parallels — after that, I might just dig up my copies of Tan's previous 2 novels and get started on them (time permitting, of course).

Received ARC from Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley.

Review: Light from Other Stars (by Erika Swyler)

My Rating: 4 stars

 

I don’t normally read science fiction and I’m usually not too keen on books about space travel either, so I surprised even myself when I decided to pick up Erika Swyler’s latest work Light from Other Stars.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but when I first read the summary, I was drawn to the story and was curious how it would turn out.  While I did end up liking the story as well as the characters a lot, I have to admit that all the science and space stuff went way over my head, to the point that I considered abandoning this more than once and moving on to something requiring less struggle.  I persevered however and I’m so glad I did, as the story was definitely worth it, especially the aspects of family, relationships, love, and humanity that were so deftly explored through the events that unfold around the main character Nedda Papas in both the past timeline (which took place in 1986) and the future, inside the space shuttle Chawla.  Speaking of which, the dual timeline format utilized in this story was unique and unlike many of the other books I’ve read before — two seemingly unrelated narratives that went off on very different tangents, but then converged in a way that surprised me.  

The writing was the other aspect of this novel that stood out — it was incredibly descriptive for sure, but more significantly, there was also a gentleness to it, with the author taking a delicate approach to all the characters while not hiding the flaws that made them human.  These were characters that were realistically drawn, yet at the same time, also didn’t feel real given the things that happen in the story.  Surreal – that’s the word that kept churning about in my mind throughout the entire time I was reading this.  Despite that, as well as the difficult (for me) subject matter, I still felt captivated by the story and the lyrical nature of the prose. 

If this review sounds vague, it’s deliberate, as this is one of those stories that needs to be experienced for yourself.  To be quite honest, I actually don’t think I understood a lot of what I read, since, like I said earlier, I get lost easily when it comes to stories that are heavy on scientific stuff and space travel, but I think what helped the most in this case was focusing on the other elements of the story that were more easily accessible and not thinking too much about the parts I was not able to wrap my head around.  This is my first time reading this author’s works and even though I struggled through this one (largely due to the subject matter), I am still interested in reading more of her works in the future.  This was definitely a different experience for me and while I probably still won’t choose to read a whole lot of science fiction because it’s just not my thing, I don’t mind occasionally reading outside of my comfort zone, especially since finishing a book like this one feels so rewarding!

Received ARC from Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley.