Friends of Maugham

The House of Doors 

by Tan Twan Eng

“All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.' He shook his head. 'We will be remembered through our stories.”   ― Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors





This is a book that grew on me in the sense that it became more and more engrossing and ultimately very powerful in an emotional sense. It was not a simple story as it involved a famous novelist, a Chinese statesman, and a murder trial. These disparate aspects were held together by the connections to a husband, Robert, and his wife, Lesley.

It examines issues of cultural dissonance, memory, and loss. In doing so the narrative centers on the lives of two well-known individuals from the early 20th century—Sun Yat Sen and W. Somerset Maugham—and is set in Penang. The book also reflects on the power of stories and their ability to cut across time and cultural boundaries.

The House of Doors also alternates between a heated courtroom drama that centers on the Proudlock affair, a meditation on how and why we tell stories, and a portrait of the artist in crisis. In a way, it is also a political saga that follows Lesley's path to self-determination and social activism.

Along with the stunning countryside, one learns about Dr. Sun Yat Sen and his friends. This expanded my library of books by and about Maugham and brought back memories of his short stories.

Sea of Poppies

a novel

“The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny, for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream: how could she have, living as she did in Northern Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast? Her village was so far inland that the sea seemed as distant as the netherworld: it was the chasm of darkness where the holy Ganga disappeared into the Kala-Pani, ‘the Black Water.’”
(Sea of Poppies, p 3)


Amitav Ghosh is a story-teller of the highest order and, in his novel Sea of Poppies, he weaves several tales together bound by the limits of time, language, class, poppies and, above all else, the sea. It is the sea that permeates the stories of various men and women and that provides the thread that ties this book together. He deftly opens the book with three paragraphs that limn three basic motifs for the novel: the sea, poppies, and the village; a village that is the starting point for Deeti, the first of many people whose stories will emerge throughout the novel. Deeti's village exists in a metaphorical "sea of poppies" which will result in her flight to the sea:

"the plants had been left to wither in the fields, so that the countryside was blanketed with the parched remnants." (p 188)

On the sea we meet Zachary Reid whose story is uplifting, but more importantly we are introduced to his ship, the Ibis, which becomes an important character in the author's sea of stories.

. . . for he had only to look at the spindrift that was flying off the schooner's bows to know that the Ibis was not a ship like any other; in her inward reality she was a vehicle of transformation, traveling through the mists of illusion towards the elusive, ever-receding landfall that was Truth.
(p 411)

The novelist is notable for his use of language. Not since Rushdie have I encountered the brilliance and bounty penned by an author. That bounty is magnified by the appendage of a forty-three page section entitled "The Ibis Chrestomathy" which, as a chrestomathy or selection of literary passages, serves as more than a glossary and can be read in its own right.

Words! Neel was of the view that words, no less than people, are endowed with lives and destinies of their own. (The Ibis Chrestomathy, p 501)

Ultimately, the author's ability to recreate a particular time and place and the way he intertwined the characters' stories were the best aspects of this novel. In spite of moments were I, if only fleetingly, felt that some of the individual events were contrived the overarching themes, motifs, and design of the novel moved it beyond these moments and made it a great read.


The Sea of Poppies: a novel by Amitav Ghosh. Picador Editions, New York. 2009 (2008)