W. Somerset Maugham is one of those writers who has always held a place on my to-read list but I have just never gotten around to reading him. That’s a real pity, because I feel that familiarity with his work would have been quite helpful in the reading of this novel. In part, it is an imagining of the people and historical events to which he was exposed on his trip to Malaysia in the 1920’s that inspired him to write his collection of stories, The Casaurina Tree. Maugham was apparently prone to using the lives of real people he encountered in his stories, something that prompts the husband of our leading lady, Lesley Hamlyn, to warn her not to share too much information with “Willie.”

I’m getting way ahead of myself, so let me back up a bit. The bulk of the drama in House of Doors, takes place in Penang in 1921 at Cassowary House, the home of Mr. Robert Hamlyn and his wife, Lesley. Somerset Maugham, who Robert and Lesley affectionately call Willie, has come to stay with his old school friend and his wife in the company of his secretary/lover, Gerald. Readers should keep in mind that this is far from an accurate historical account of Maugham’s life. Lesley and Robert, for instance, are fictional people borrowed from Maugham’s story, The Letter, which told a story inspired by the real-life murder trial of Ethel Proudlock in 1911. Eng keeps the fictional Ethel as Ethel which Maugham had changed to LeslIE, but now Ethel is best friends with LeslEY who tells the story of the murder and subsequent trial to Willie. Follow me so far? Probably not, and that’s totally ok. I kind of view this song and dance as Eng’s paying homage to Maugham while at the same time poking fun at his super half-hearted attempt at ensuring those who inspired his stories remain “anonymous.”

As readers, we get two perspectives: the first person narrative by Lesley and a third person narrative following Willie. In this respect, we get to be somewhat of a fly on the wall to Maugham but we also get first-hand perceptions of the writer from those close to him. We are introduced to him at a time in which he faces dire financial troubles due to a bad investment and his marriage to his wife, Syrie, is in shambles. He spends most of his time traveling since his lover, Gerald, has been banned from their home country due to a “homosexual incident” in 1915. He desperately needs something to publish so that he may escape utter financial ruin, which he fears would drive away Gerald, a young man accustomed to being pampered by his wealthy benefactor.

As Willie and Lesley bond, she opens up to him about the secrets of the past and the secrets of her own marriage. Through their shared histories, we explore themes of love, devotion, race, gender, sexuality, and of course all of these intense sociopolitical events that shaped modern China and the British-occupied Malay peninsula in the early 20th century. Penang, as it were, was a major center for trade during this period bringing a large and diverse population. This population included a large number of Chinese-born immigrants, and the novel includes a fictionalized version of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen on his visit to Penang as he sought to drum up support for his cause. Lesley narrates to Willie her dealings with Sun Yat-sen and her growing interest in the plight of China. All of this helps us to understand Lesley’s transition into a stronger and more complex woman of the world. I greatly admired the way her story unfolded and had a completely different idea of who she was from the first chapter to the last.

This novel is a deeply complicated undertaking that succeeds because it was put to page by the competent hands of someone as skilled as Tan Twan Eng, and it’s no surprise it was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023. While I wouldn’t call it masterful, it’s still a highly compelling narrative with a lot of depth of character. I definitely recommend it, especially for fans of historical fiction looking for a work that explores settings often neglected in the literary realm. It also poses a lot of challenges to our preconceived societal notions of morality, which I can definitely appreciate.

Published October 17, 2023 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 9781639731930. Runtime 11 hrs 15 mins. Narrated by David Oakes and Louise-Mai Newberry.