Despite a music-related title, first-time author Janice Y.K. Lee leaves sweet music out of her imminent novel, The Piano Teacher (coming in early 2009, Viking, 326 pages). Well-researched and gritty, her tale of tragic love and cruel conniving in mid-20th century Hong Kong will stir gloomy thoughts for almost every reader.
Sometimes delicately, often harshly, Lee weaves together narrative threads about war and its dire consequences. She tells a Second World War story not about battle scenes, but rather about internment camps, dangerous liaisons, torture, deprivation, humiliation and murder.
In 1942, an adventure-seeking protagonist named Will Truesdale arrives in Hong Kong and falls for Eurasian socialite Trudy Liang. Then the Japanese invade.
A decade later, along comes Claire Pendleton, another Brit, with her husband Martin who has work with the Department of Water Services. She begins teaching piano to Locket Chen, a youngster in a prominent family.
Still battered by wartime troubles, Will works as a driver for the Chens, but finds time to excel as Claire's lover. Even serious passion between the main characters can't ease the grimness on these pages.
What really happened in wartime Hong Kong? Little that's pleasant. “I saw a dead baby on a pile of rubbish this morning as I came here. It's all around, the rubbish and the corpses.... It smells like what I imagine hell smells like.”
Ever wondered about life in an internment camp? “Rice, rice, rice. After some two months, it's all anyone talks about. They have become absurdly creative with it – grinding it for flour, boiling it for gruel and water, trying to stretch it out as much as possible. Food is the main topic.”
The Hong Kong-born author has edited at Elle and Mirabella magazines. She thrives on vivid details and sly symbolism. “The few storefronts... are closed up and dark inside. The windows are already dirty from the soot and dirt kicked up by the bombs, but through one, Will can see a rotting egg tart, its glistening yellow surface slowly being invaded by green mold. A fly lands on top, and starts making its way across the mold, twitching its antennae. An airplane whines overhead and Will flinches instinctively.”
The author's home-city knowledge helps to describe Hong Kong as “loud and crowded and dirty and bustling” with laundry dangled on bamboo poles and garish vertical signs for massage parlors, pubs and hair salons. Even in 2008, it's much the same.
Only in the final pages do Claire and the readers fully understand the wartime tragedies that befell Will and others. There's a hazard that harsh events may numb readers until they no longer care what happens to the characters, most of whom commit nasty deeds. Lee's depressing theme is that people do terrible things, even to each other, when forced to struggle, scrape and grovel. “Scratch the surface of a man. See what appears.”
Not every reader will enjoy The Piano Teacher, but they'll recognize its honesty and importance. Ideally, this first novel should become one of many for Lee.
Approval rating: 73 per cent.
For more information: www.penguin.com
(December 12, 2008)
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