The House of Doors

Product Information

Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction. W. Somerset Maugham and his wife Syrie in the mid 1920s. I could not find a photo from Penang in 1921. This image was sourced from W. Somerset Maugham: A Portrait Gallery

Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward by Oliver Soden, Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox, and Papyrus by Irene Vallejo. The novel was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and listed among notable fiction works in 2023 by The Washington Post and The Financial Times. This novel is beautifully engrossing — filled with fascinating heartfelt and heart-wrenching gripping history 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.Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger. I think she’s an underrated writer and should be more widely known. Her shifts of time and viewpoint (the two often happening simultaneously) are seamless and masterful. A person dies in the final scene in Moon Tiger, but Lively doesn’t describe it. All the reader senses is that something has depleted from the room in the nursing home, and that something is… life. And yet… life still goes on. With three-dimensional memorable characters ….Eng’s depiction of their relationships— particularly between Lesley and Willie is masterly. Within these layers of the storyline are many different strands. There is the intrigue of the murder trial, insight into Maugham’s life and Sun Yat Sen’s, and the lives of Europeans, Straits Chinese, Malays and others in Penang at this time. The writing is excellent, although I occasionally found descriptive passages a little overdone and convoluted, and it held my interest completely throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the only reason it’s not a 5 star read for me is due to very minor issues such as this. I thoroughly enjoyed The House of Doors, and it has inspired me to read several original works by W. Somerset Maugham including some of the short story collections [RTC]. What does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts, long pauses, or sudden bursts of activity?

The second point of view is the voice of W Somerset Maugham, the writer who spent most of his life away from Britain writing his own fiction about people he met on his travels. The novel was inspired by the short story called Letter, which can be read in the Cassowary Tree collection. Also, if you read this novel, you will probably wonder how Maugham’s symbol looks like. There’s a gap of 10 years between the publication of The House of Doors and your previous book - did you always anticipate it would take a long time to write this one? The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Despite the differences between them Maugham finds himself drawn to Lesley and she finally tells him not only her story but that of a friend whose affair spiralled out of control with devastating consequences.The House of Doors is based on true events, and is partly drawn from a Malaysian murder case in 1911. What was it about the story that captivated you, and made you want to base a novel around it? This is, indeed, a novel of many doors – perhaps a couple too many. The title refers to the literal kind: the ancient Chinese doors collected by the revolutionary Chinese lover of Lesley Hamlyn, Somerset Maugham’s fictional English host, and stored in the house in downtown Penang in which the couple meet. It feels just as exciting as the first and second time, because each book is different, and each longlist is different. But there’s more intense social media attention now, compared to when my first novel was nominated. Maugham, having arrived in Penang to stay with his old friend Robert and wife, Lesley, has been given some dreadful news regarding his finances. He needs stories and ones that will increase his fortune not only to keep his own travels financed but also to keep his assistant, Gerald, by his side. There's much to be said about Eng's ability to craft a scene, especially the vivid settings and descriptions of nature. Though the novel as a whole seems to fall into many of the tropes of historical fiction, he does excel in rendering a location or crafting a rich environment within which his characters reside.