Tag: Asian author

The House of Doors: A Novel by Tan Twan Eng

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The House of Doors: A Novel by Tan Twan Eng

I was very excited to read The House of Doors, being Malaysian (though now living the diaspora). Tan did not disappoint in any way. I was profoundly moved; the setting of the novel, in high colonial era Penang, evoked a sense of lost history for me, being so far from Malaysia, and culturally divorced from all that home invokes, but I also suffered for the characters and felt the grief of their romantic losses.

This novel is a romantic anti-romance, the kind of romantic novel that mimics tragic, realistic romance in life, with all the attendant unhappy endings and disappoints, guilt and regret, nostalgia and memory that romance actually delivers.

There are two intertwined stories here, that of Lesley Hamlyn, a middle aged British woman living in Penang with her lawyer husband, and “Willie” Somerset Maugham, the novelist who comes to stay with them for a short holiday (which turns into a research and writing expedition). They are products of their British Colonial culture; this is the 1920s, the peak of British rule in Malaya, and they represent the elite class that enjoys all Asia has to offer.

Lesley and Willie form an unusual friendship, and in doing so, the stories of their respective romances is unveiled and threatens both of them and their place in society. Love brings both of them pain and escape; traps them and offers them a way out.

Tan tackles tough subjects: queerness, interracial romance, sexuality and sex, gendered expectations — all things the British were (are?) notorious for suppressing at home and abroad. Tan does this with great skill; the writing is gorgeous. A particular ocean scene utterly devastated me; I was as submerged as the characters in it.

This is a book I will need for my personal library.

Yellowface: A Novel by R.F. Kuang

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Yellowface: A Novel by R.F. Kuang

Easily the best novel I have read this year. Or, at least, the most engaging and ire-provoking one. If you haven’t yet read Yellowface, you must. The novel is one of those you just can’t put down because you are dying to know what next wreck is going to happen.

The main character is a woman you’ll hate. The victim is also pretty unlovable. And the psychological twists lead to an unpredictable and yet oh-so-predictable ending. I know I’m being coy. Just read the book. You won’t regret it.

The novel revolves around two authors, one who plagiarizes another in the most god-awful way possible. And then more or less gets away with it. Sort of. That’s it. That’s the book.

But oh, the way Kuang tells it is so deliciously witty. The snark and sharp edginess of resentment and guilt and hate is palpable in Kuang’s prose. It’s the kind of writing that stirs up hot and fiery anger in the reader. I loved it.

Read it.

Get on that ridiculously long library hold list and wait for this book. So worth it.

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

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Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

A beautiful, character-driven tale of mothering and daughtering; that is, the ways in which we mother our children and the ways in which daughters express and manifest themselves as the offspring their mothers. This is a quiet, assuming novel about the ways in which we express parental and filial love, the unspoken reasons why we come to expect love in particular ways.

The plot follows a touristic vacation for the narrator and her mother in Tokyo, Japan. It begins and ends with this short episode in their lives, but the novel reveals their lifetimes of emotional involvement with one another and draws other family members into these reflections. The reader is given a privileged view of this family’s most private interior relationships.

Au’s choice of a touristic holiday is perfect for the discussion of belonging and not, of generational divide and continuity that fills the narrator’s thoughts. A history of immigration, transnational, and transcultural trauma and identity-building is threaded into the fabric of the novel; the events of the mother-daughter duo’s traipses around the Japanese city and its sights are the perfect backdrop to this commentary.

This is book no one could possibly regret reading. If regret is invoked, it is because one missed its slim presence on a shelf.