A few weeks ago, I heard Ari Shapiro interview Tan Twan Eng about this book on All Things Considered. I wasn't even paying super close attention, but the talk about Penang sounded interesting to me, and I hadn't read a book from Malaysia. I ordered a copy on the spot and promptly forgot all about it. When a package that was clearly a book arrived a few days later, I thought it was the Bradt guide to Emilia Romagna I had ordered recently, and I was momentarily confused when I opened the package before it all came back to me.
The House of Doors sat on my coffee table while I attempted to read the next book for my Women in Translation book club, The Discomfort of Evening. A week ahead of that meeting, I decided to give up on that book altogether (it turned out several of us did: it's a grim, grim book) and go ahead and start The House of Doors.
The House of Doors is set in Penang, Malaysia in two periods: 1910 and 1921. The later period covers a visit W. Somerset Maugham made to the city, staying with a local couple. The 1910 events are recounted to Maugham by the wife. She tells Maugham the story of Ethel Proudlock, an English woman convicted of murder in Kuala Lumpur, which Maugham takes and turns into his short story, The Letter. She also tells him about her own life during that time, in which she was swept up in the community supporting Sun-yat Sen in his work toward a republic in China.
Many years ago, I read Anthony Burgess' The Long Day Wanes and that pretty much accounts for what I knew of British-ruled Malaya – the world The House of Doors is set in. Around the same time, I also read The Razor's Edge and later Of Human Bondage and The Painted Veil. Reading The House of Doors left me wanting to see Penang, and wishing that I'd read more Somerset Maugham. There's still time – for both these things, I suppose.
