JANICE Y K LEE: The Piano Teacher

A holiday read in 2009.

The conversation with Janice YK Lee at the end of book reveals how the novel started out as a short story and then developed with the introduction of new characters. It took five years to complete and was a process of writing and writing about what the characters did and said.

Along with this went extensive research into Hong Kong in World War II that gives the novel its fascinating and vivid detail. Janice YK Lee says she hoped people can really sink themselves into the world that is portrayed in the book. I certainly did sink into it myself, the atmosphere of Hong Kong during the occupation and the post war period was so finely recreated, the social scene, clothes, mannerisms, the food, were all drawn in fine detail.

The central characters Trudy, Will and Claire were all flawed and believable. I enjoyed the characters so much, the plot and the story were secondary. The plot – the Crown Collection – a hoard of precious artefacts being hidden away during the war and finally being unearthed and returned to the Chinese in a shady deal – was almost superfluous, it was the experience.

General Fiction Novel
Published in 2009
HarperCollins ( )

good ( )

I found this book a little hard to follow at first as it regularly skips between 2 different time periods with different (but interlocking) characters. However, by the 2nd section I was hooked.

A dramatic and sometimes heartwrenching story of how the 2nd World War affected the lives of 2 women and a man living in Hong Kong. Filled with insights into daily life and the cultural tension. Well worth a read. ( )

When Claire Pendleton moves to Hong Kong in 1953 with her civil servant husband, she enters into an illicit love affair with Will Truesdale, a British expatriate whose mysterious past is revealed through a series of flashback vignettes to the era of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during WWII. ljh 9/09 ( )