Tag: readingchallenges

#BookReview #Ad The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng @canongatebooks

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The House of DoorsAbout the Book

It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steey wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.

Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she sees him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.

Format: eARC (320 pages)              Publisher: Canongate
Publication date: 18th May 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The House of Doors on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

I loved both of Tan Twan Eng’s previous books – The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists – but, boy, has he made us wait a long time for his next one. It’s been well worth the wait though because The House of Doors is absolutely brilliant. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pop up on the longlist for next year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Set in Penang (the author’s birthplace) and moving beween 1910 and 1921, it’s an intimate and nuanced portrait of the complications and consequences of relationships that must remain clandestine, such as that between Willie Somerset Maugham and Gerald Haxton, nominally his secretary but actually his lover.

The book opens in 1947 as Lesley Hamlyn, living on a remote farm in Doomfontein, South Africa, receives a package containing a copy of the book, The Casuarina Tree by W (Willie) Somerset Maugham. It evokes memories of the author’s two week stay in 1921 with her and her late husband, Robert, at Cassowary House, their former home in Penang. It was a place Lesley loved and was reluctant to leave but did so out of a mixture of loyalty to her husband, and despair. The book also has another significance for Lesley, one which the reader will only discover in the moving final chapter of the book.

Willie arrives in Penang in 1921 weakened by sickness from his travels through the Far East and beset by money troubles, a situation he fears may scupper his relationship with Gerald who has become used to a luxury lifestyle. In order to restore his finances, he needs to find material for his next book. Willie and Lesley form an immediate bond, both being in marriages that provide a form of cover from society gossip and speculation.  Lesley begins to unburden herself to Willie, sharing details of a secret relationship that took place ten years earlier as well as her involvement with charismatic Chinese revolutionary, Sen Yat-Sen (a real life figure).  She also reveals her connection with a (real life) murder case that scandalised the British inhabitants of the Straits Settlement and the Federated Malay States.

Willie uses her recollections as material for the stories in The Casuarina Tree. Reading the published book, and in particular the story ‘The Letter’, Lesley observes that ‘He had woven it into something that was familiar to me, yet also uncanny; factual, but at the same time completely fictional.’  Tan Twan Eng has harnessed the same writer’s instinct to blend historical fact with fiction in order to create this wonderful novel.

Those who have read Tan Twan Eng’s previous novels won’t be surprised that there is wonderful descriptive writing that really brings to life the bustling streets of the ‘real’ Penang, i.e. the Penang that the white residents don’t see. There is also a wonderful scene in which Willie and Lesley go for an evening swim. ‘That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity.’ Gorgeous.

The House of Doors of the title is an actual place in the novel but is also a metaphor for things that must remain hidden, often things more wonderful than the plain facade shown to the outside world.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Canongate via NetGalley.

In three words: Assured, intimate, moving

Try something similar: The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry

Tan Twan EngAbout the Author

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. His debut novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 and has been widely translated. The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 and the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The House of Doors is his third novel. (Photo: Publisher author page)

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#BlogTour #BookReview #Ad Sepulchre Street by Martin Edwards

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Sepulchre StreetWelcome to the opening day of the blog tour for Sepulchre Street by Martin Edwards, which is published tomorrow, 11th May 2023. My thanks to Kathryn at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, The Puzzle Doctor.

Sepulchre StreetAbout the Book

‘This is my challenge for you,’ the woman in white said. ‘I want you to solve my murder.’

London, 1930s: Rachel Savernake has been invited to a private view of an art exhibition at a fashionable gallery. The artist, Damaris Gethin, known as ‘the Queen of Surrealism’, is debuting a show featuring live models pretending to be waxworks of famous killers. Before her welcoming speech, Damaris asks a haunting favour of the amateur sleuth: she wants Rachel to solve her murder. As Damaris takes to a stage set with a guillotine, the lights go out. There is a cry and the blade falls. Damaris has executed herself.

While Rachel questions why Damaris would take her own life – and just what she meant by ‘solve my murder’ – fellow party guest Jacob Flint is chasing a lead on a glamorous socialite with a sordid background. As their paths merge, this case of false identities, blackmail, and fedora-adorned doppelgängers, will descend upon a grand home on Sepulchre Street, where nothing – and no one – is quite what it seems.

Format: eARC (400 pages)             Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 11th May 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Find Sepulchre Street on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Sepulchre Street is the fourth in the author’s historical crime series featuring Rachel Savernake. It’s a series I only discovered when I read the previous book, Blackstone Fell.

Rachel Savernake is not so much a private detective as a personal detective pursuing investigations that spark her interest. As she herself admits, ‘It’s the thrill of the chase. I yearn for it like an addict craves the needle’ and her favourite pastime is ‘Asking  what if?’ But it’s not just any old crime that attracts her: her taste is for the ‘exotic’.

The author teases us by continuing to hold back information about Rachel’s past growing up on the remote island of Gaunt.  (Some readers may find this frustrating but I find it tantalising.) What we do know is that she is a very wealthy young woman. However, her early life remains shrouded in mystery. She zealously guards her privacy and is a formidable adversary.  Beware what she carries in that glittery evening bag! She’s incredibly well read, resourceful and imperturbable in even the most fraught situations, although, at times, her lack of fear appears to some to verge on recklessness. In fact, she’s just supremely confident she’ll be able to find a way out of any situation.

The members of Rachel’s household – Martha Trueman, Martha’s brother Clifford, and Clifford’s wife Hetty – are devoted to her. Although performing the role of servants – housekeeper, cook and chauffeur come bodyguard – it’s clear they’re the closest Rachel has to a family and may know more than they’re letting on about her past. Rachel is particularly good at utilising their various talents as part of her investigations whether that’s gathering gossip or carrying out a little subterfuge. Crime reporter, Jacob Flint, is once again involved in the story. It’s fairly obvious he has a huge crush on Rachel. He himself admits that from the moment of their first encounter she has fascinated him ‘to the point of obsession’.

The author describes Sepulchre Street as ‘as much a thriller as a detective story’ and the story certainly involves some dramatic scenes, often involving poor Jacob who seems to make a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s also a returning character who’s not your common or garden villain but performs the role of shady behind-the-scenes manipulator.

Rachel’s attempts to discover the reason behind the grisly death of Damaris Gethin, carried out by Damaris’s own hand, involve a number of other characters and plot lines which attract the spotlight for much of the book. Some of these plot lines incorporate quite contemporary themes. Of course, Rachel, who possesses observational and deductive skills to rival Sherlock Holmes, arrives at the answer to the mystery well before everyone else, including, I suspect, most readers. In fact her methodology – ‘I simply follow an idea until I find something that proves that I’m wrong’ – has a distinctly Holmesian flavour.

Sepulchre Street will appeal to fans of classic crime fiction (think Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers) and those who enjoy the challenge of unravelling an intricate plot. A neat touch is the addition of a ‘cluefinder’ at the end of the book (apparently all the fashion during the ‘Golden Age of Murder’ between the two world wars) in which the author identifies all the clues you very likely missed.

In three words: Intriguing, clever, entertaining

Try something similar: A Gift of Poison by Bella Ellis

Martin EdwardsAbout the Author

Martin Edwards has won the Edgar, Agatha, H. R. F. Keating, Macavity, Poirot and Dagger awards as well as being shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize.  He is President of the Detection Club, a former Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and consultant to the British Library’s bestselling crime classics series.

In 2020 he was awarded the Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to crime fiction.

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