Just now, I finally put this book down. I had no choice. I’d finished it. As usual, when I find a book particularly moving and exquisitely written, I feel like I can’t do it justice. Tan Twan Eng brings us to 1921 Penang in Malaysia where Leslie Hamlyn, a British woman born and raised in Penang lives with her husband Robert, an ex pat British Barrister. Robert is friends with Somerset Maugham (Willie) and he is coming to visit the Hamlyns at their home, Cassowary House. Maugham brings with him his lover, nominally referred to as his secretary, Gerald Paxton. The Hamlyn’s two sons are in boarding school in England. Their visitors have both been ill. It has been many years since Robert and Willie roomed together in London for eight months. Since then each has married and had children and Robert has come home from WWI with severe lung damage, made worse in the hot, damp Malaysian climate. We already know from an introductory segment that the Hamlyns later moved to South Africa for Robert’s health and that after fifteen years, he died there, Leslie stayed on instead of returning to Penang.
While visiting, Willie receives a letter from his New York lawyer announcing he lost all of his money in a risky investment. Objectively, when Willie is focussed on the Gauguin’s he will have to sell, it can be hard to feel super sympathetic, but he is frightened, concerned he’ll now have to stop traveling and be with his wife and that he might lose Gerald. He’s playing things close to the vest and desperately writing every day to get out a book of short stories as quickly as possible. And one night, when neither of them can sleep, Leslie starts to share and then continues to share a story with Willie of her life in 1911, when her marriage was troubled and her best friend killed a man. This was also the period when a Chinese man, Sun Yat-Sen, and others formed a Revolutionary Alliance to overthrow the last dynasty in China. Sun Yat-Sen had already engaged in several unsuccessful, bloody attempts to overthrow the Emporer. He was in Penang to raise money for the cause and because he was thrown out of every other country where he spent time due to his political work and efforts to fund and recruit for his cause. The Hamlyns get to know him and through him, Leslie does some translation work for the cause. She starts to get more familiar with the Chinese community.
So, this is the backdrop for Leslie’s tales for Willie, that go deeply into what happened with her marriage to Robert. This is the period she translated pamphlets for the Chinese revolutionary community and made friends with a man who owned a house where he stored Chinese doors he rescued from demolition. Leslie shares with Willie details of what she knows about Ethel Proudlock’s murder of a man she says tried to rape her. Leslie describers her part in Ethel’s trial where the punishment could well be hanging. This book is a story of relationships, but in an interesting way, examining many permutations that remind us each relationship is unique. It examines and reminds us of the safe way homosexual men from Great Britain, and their wives, functioned in society. Gerald, who never married, could never go back to Great Britain because he had been reported and faced prosecution and imprisonment for being gay if he returned. Willie believed his wife was behind Gerald’s being outed. Willie’s wife gains prestige from being associated with a famous and wealthy writer and they have a daughter together.
Meanwhile, Leslie recounts to Willie stories of various married people who were committing adultery, including with same and opposite sex lovers, and the ways this shaped their marriages. Somehow, over the course of this novel, we enjoy an immersive experience into the higher society of the British and Chinese communities. We learn a little about the people who serve the wealthy. We find out about the year leading up to the Chinese revolution of 1912. We learn a lot about W. Somerset Maugham as a human being who spent most of his time traveling the world with his lover. I found myself watching an old black and white tv interview of him when he was around 80 and could definitely recognize the affable and erudite man in the book, not a snob but proud of his work and aware of his fame. Eng definitely does his personality and humanity justice.
We are transported to the place and time and Leslie’s world, knowing that her story may well be in the next group of short stories Willie publishes. And, in fact, his short story, “The Letter” in a collection called “The Casuarina Tree.” retells the murder story. This was only a fraction of what Leslie shared. This is a love story too, a very moving one that makes you root for a couple and yearn for them to be able to be together. It is a story about how people make relationships that are not love-based function, where no matter what everyone knows, the actors play their roles as they are meant to. And even though the rules seemed decidedly different from contemporary times, it feels like we could be on the brink culturally and politically of shutting closet doors on gay people if they want jobs and safety and on the brink of making interracial relationships harder, far more forbidden. I was frequently struck by the fact the experiences of the characters have a contemporary relevance.
This is an amazing, engrossing story, beautifully written, giving us an understanding of the several cultures occupying Malaysia in the early 20th century that we enjoy and do not want to leave. The characters and what drives them are all interesting as well. Highly, highly recommend.
They Called me Bookworm 