The House of Doors is based on real events in the lives of William Somerset Maugham and Dr Sun Yat Sen (Sun Wen), a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China.
Tan Twan Eng cleverly structures the novel to mix fact and fiction. As he quotes Maugham: ‘Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work … I can hardly distinguish one from the other.’
This is my feeling about this novel. Maugham travelled extensively with Gerald, his secretary-companion, listening to fellow travellers and using their stories in his own writing.
Tan Twan Eng narrates Maugham’s stay in Penang with Robert, an old friend, and his wife, Lesley. She becomes the narrator and the source of inspiration for Maugham’s book of short stories.
Maugham combs Lesley’s memory of her relationship with Sun Wen in Penang 10 years earlier. Lesley tells Maugham of her role in a group editing secret documents about corruption of the Chinese Government. She also confides secrets about her personal life – an unhappy marriage, gender choices, and her secret love affair in the House of Doors where Arthur, a Chinese co-worker, leads her. He keeps memories of his culture alive by saving decorated doors of temples and shopfronts, from becoming firewood.
Lesley also reveals her friendship with Ethel, charged with the murder of a man in Penang in 1910. Maugham immortalises this historical story of love and betrayal in The Letter. ‘We will be remembered through our stories … beyond even time itself,’ Maugham tells Lesley.
Tan Twan Eng’s extensive research of Maugham’s writings and Sun Yat Sen’s history gives the narrative authenticity. His description of place and characters is sensual and poetic. The tussle of relationships between individuals and nations and their secrets make this story alluring.
I am motivated to read more of his and Maugham’s books.
Reviewed by Judith Grace
ABOUT THE AUTHORTan Twan Eng was born in Penang in 1972 and grew up in Malaysia. He worked as an intellectual property lawyer in Kuala Lumpur. He is the author of two novels, The Gift of Rain (2007), set in Penang before and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II, longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction; and The Garden of Evening Mists (2012), shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. His novels have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Czech, French, German, Dutch, Polish and Chinese. Tan Twan Eng divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.
She’s done it again. Miles Franklin Award-winning author, Melissa Lucashenko has written a vibrant, tragic novel with dashes of humour that will resonate with all Australians, and particularly those living in and around Brisbane.
The author carried out extensive research into colonial Queensland history, but stresses that this novel is fiction, and although some characters did exist in that era, others are her creations. The title is that of a colonial name given to the inner Brisbane area now called Newstead.
Lucashenko has melded a tale of the 1850s Aboriginal people of that area with a story set in the modern Brisbane of 2024.
In that year, enter Eddie Blanket, a matriarch of the urban Aboriginal community, who is 100, maybe 103, or maybe neither. When in hospital after a fall, the difference between her attitudes and that of her granddaughter, Winona, becomes clear.
Winona is beautiful, clever, well read, an activist, and an angry young woman; while Eddie maintains that their people should not be sunk in bitterness or stuck in the past. She also knows more about the lore of her people than her granddaughter and prevents her from committing unspeakable errors in her activism.
The story set in the 1850s, just before Queensland became its own State, concerns the love of Mulanyin, a young saltwater man from the Nerang area, for Nita, an Aboriginal servant of the Petries, his interactions with that prominent family, and the white justice system.
Fast forward to 2024, and the elderly Eddie becomes the poster girl of celebrations marking 200 years since John Oxley named the Brisbane River. This is where the story takes a magical turn.
The 1850s Aboriginal residents named the river Warrar, and that is the term Lucashenko uses. She peppers the narrative with Yagara and Yugambeh words, having been guided by custodians of those local languages.
There is no glossary to explain the words, but the reader soon realises what they mean, with the novel melding settler and Aboriginal language. Edenglassie provides a deep understanding of the dispossession of the 1800s as well as urban Aboriginal viewpoints.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
Released October 2023
ABOUT THE AUTHORMelissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. She has been publishing books with UQP since 1997, with her first novel, Steam Pigs, winning the Dobbie Literary Award and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Hard Yards (1999) was shortlisted for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and Mullumbimby (2013) won the Queensland Literary Award and was longlisted for the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Kibble Literary Award.
She has also written two novels for teenagers, Killing Darcy (UQP, 1998) and Too Flash (IAD Press, 2002). In 2013 Melissa won the inaugural long-form Walkley Award for her Griffith REVIEW essay ‘Sinking Below Sight: Down and Out in Brisbane and Logan’.
There is much to commend in this novel, particularly the historical research, but readers must be patient.
It is not the first book written about Australian Army nurses evacuated from Singapore as the Japanese invaded in World War II. In 1954, White Coolies by one of those nurses, Betty Jeffrey, was published to much acclaim, detailing their lives as POWs after their ship, the Vyner Brooke, was bombed and sunk off Sumatra in February 1942.
Some of those nurses captured were held by the Japanese in appalling, deadly conditions in POW camps until the war ended in 1945, but others were raped and killed on a Bangka Island beach, after male shipwreck survivors had been shot and bayoneted.
For Hodgson, this story is personal. Her great-aunt, Minnie Hodgson, was one of the 22 nurses on the beach that day. Just one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkel, was injured but pretended to be dead until the Japanese troops left the beach. Eventually she surrendered and joined other nurses in a series of POW camps.
When she gave post-war evidence of the massacre at a War Crimes Tribunal, she was ‘gagged’ by the Australian Government and not allowed to talk about the rapes. That evidence did not emerge until 2019.
The War Nurses is dedicated to Minnie Hodgson, and while the author has used moving, authentic historical and anecdotal accounts by those who were there, she has four fictional characters representing the 65 nurses aboard the Vyner Brooke, including one standing for her great-aunt. It is fiction based on atrocious facts.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
Anthea’s most recent novel, The War Nurses, brings the story of the 65 nurses of the Vyner Brooke, and the victims of the Bangka Island Massacre to a broader audience. She was inspired to honour her great aunt Minnie Hodgson, who died in the massacre, along with all the amazing nurses who were bombed, imprisoned, beaten and starved during WW2, and who survived, with great dignity, courage, strength and love.
Anthea regards The War Nurses as her finest professional achievement.
Open the pages of The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson and be transported to the bawdy, smelly, noisy streets of Restoration London. In 1679 Tribulation Johnson is cast out by her vicar father for her tempestuous tongue and is sent to stay with a cousin in London. The cousin is no less than the writer, Aphra Behn.
Brooks tells a rousing story of the politics and tumult of the theatre scene at that time, with companies and venues to be closed down on the whim of King Charles II, with actresses regarded as little more than whores, and women who wrote for the theatre doing so under assumed names.
Aphra Behn was one of the many real historical figures in this novel, with a list at the end of the book denoting those who had lived at the time, and those whom Brooks created, including Tribulation Johnson.
It’s an odd name for a woman, but all is revealed before the story ends. While Tribulation is the star of this book, it is Aphra Behn who leads a really interesting life. She ‘writes for bread’, as she tells her young cousin, having to move to cheaper lodgings when her income lessens. Her output includes plays, poems, tracts and public letters, attracting awe as well as disapproval.
This Hobart-based author evokes the language and politics of the time, the so-called Popish Plot, and the King’s succession in a London that readers can almost smell and hear.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
Karen Brooks is an Australian author, columnist, social commentator and academic. She writes fantasy novels for children and young adults, under both Karen Brooks and Karen R. Brooks and has also published short stories and non-fiction works.
Karen’s first novel, a young adult fantasy, It’s Time, Cassandra Klein, was published by Lothian in July 2001. Her second, The Gaze of the Gorgon was released August 2002, followed by The Book of Night in 2003, and The Kurs of Atlantis in 2004. One reviewer in Melbourne, Ray Sherriff, going so far as to describe Kurs as being “technically superior to any contemporary text I have read in the past few years. The research, experience, planning and prudence throughout its preparation have allowed the progression of the narrative and plot to incorporate its complexities organically. The result is a very entertaining, speedy, atmospherically lucid and enjoyable story.” Karen’s fifth novel, The Rifts of Quentaris, which is part of the highly successful Quentaris shared world series of Michael Pryor and Paul Collins was published in February 2005.
Daisley has the uncanny ability, within a few sentences, to create the narrative’s mood and to paint a character’s portrait. This novel has a deep melancholy but is far from maudlin. The protagonist, Roy Mitchell, is a laconic New Zealander – a straight-talker with a fondness for animals, rather than people.
Roy is a twin. His brother, Tony, is the yin to his yang. Where Roy is pragmatic, Tony is idealistic; Roy can seem hard, Tony has a softness that Roy scoffs at. The boys grow up on a North Taranaki hillside near the Mangawhero River. Against Tony’s advice, Roy tries to cross the river in a flood and is trapped beneath the water. Tony rescues him.
World War II breaks out and the boys enlist in NZ’s 22nd Battalion. Roy and Tony are at a listening post on Crete as German paratroopers attack. Tony is badly wounded. Roy retreats. He returns the next morning, but Tony is gone. A guilt-ridden Roy rejoins his battalion, which is being shipped to North Africa. Tony – unbeknownst to Roy – is alive, saved by a German medic.
Juxtaposition is essential to the narrative. Combat’s barbarity sits beside mundane tasks, like cooking. Roy’s platoon runs through a minefield, and the soldiers laugh, talking of home. Within the platoon, Manny is coarse; David is soft. (He’s nicknamed ‘Sister’ and had a close relationship with Tony.)
The narrative has many fragmented sentences. Much like when you talk to yourself. Reflecting and remembering. A Better Place isn’t a simple war story: it’s a novel of fraternal and romantic love. The writing – particularly the characterisation and description of Taranaki – is magnificent. The narrative and its characters will linger long after the final page.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up in the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs.
His first novel, Traitor, won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Coming Rain won the Ockham Prize in 2015. Stephen lives in Western Australia.
Ernest Hemingway’s third child, Gregory, had a difficult life living in his father’s shadow, constantly fighting for his adoration. A sentence of praise, a constantly sought-after gift. He was born a natural athlete, handsome and intelligent. But he also lived with a secret. A secret he found terrible and shameful. Gregory liked to dress in women’s clothes. With his father a paragon of masculinity, this passion was never going to be tolerated, always considered abnormal. There had to be something wrong with his favourite son. His father’s derision only added to his crippling feelings of guilt and shame.
This novelisation of his life covers 70 years of a love/hate relationship between father and son. A relationship akin to tumultuous waves in a storm. It is about having the courage to come out of the closet and live life in an era with no tolerance for that life. It is a story about trying to live up to impossible standards while living with debilitating guilt. Guilt that his actions led to his mother’s death. A guilt that his father only exacerbates as their relationship starts to dwindle.
Most readers will know of Ernest Hemingway’s struggle with depression and his eventual suicide but may not know that his son was also afflicted and diagnosed with the same scourge. Gregory’s life is filled with tragedy and sadness, but also strength and resilience. His life was a struggle and at times it is difficult, painful, to read. But admiration is felt as he battles his urges and depression in a century that had little understanding of either.
The Broken Places is a wonderfully written debut, which has urged me to read more about the Hemingway family.
Reviewed by Neale Lucas
