The Piano Teacher - Hardcover

Lee, Janice Y. K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007286198 ISBN 13: 9780007286195

Publisher: HarperPress, 2009

Synopsis

Ambitious, exotic, and a classic book club read, 'The Piano Teacher' is a combination of 'Tenko' meets 'The Remains of the Day'. Sometimes the end of a love affair is only the beginning... In 1942, Will Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their love affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese, with terrible consequences for both of them, and for members of their fragile community who will betray each other in the darkest days of the war. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton lands in Hong Kong and is hired by the wealthy Chen family as their daughter's piano teacher. A provincial English newlywed, Claire is seduced by the colony's heady social life. She soon begins an affair, only to discover that her lover's enigmatic demeanour hides a devastating past. As the threads of this compelling and engrossing novel intertwine and converge, a landscape of impossible choices emerges -- between love and safety, courage and survival, the present and above all, the past.

About this title

Review:

'This is a rare and exquisite story. It does exactly what a great novel should do - transports you out of time, out of place, into a world you can feel on your very skin'

From the Publisher:

'The Creative Gift' - an article about The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee

‘But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master, something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.’ So wrote Charlotte Brontė, perfectly capturing the mystery of the writer’s craft. What is it that inspires authors to put pen to paper: curiosity, sympathy, passion, obsession? In her own words, Janice Y. K. Lee reveals some of the influences that compelled her to write The Piano Teacher...

The Piano Teacher started as a short story about Claire and Locket, an Englishwoman and a Chinese girl in 1950s Hong Kong. I was born and raised in Hong Kong myself and had always been tantalized by glimpses of the old colonial order and how it existed in uneasy proximity with local society, both high and low. Trudy was the next character to emerge and she sprang fully formed off the page, vivid and alive; then Will arrived, more measured but still surprisingly real at his birth. With no idea what these characters had come to do, but knowing that they belonged in the same story, I just kept writing about what they said to each other, what they did, where they did it. I had no map, no outline, just a sense that it might all work out. Over the next five years, I read extensively about the period and noted details of dress, speech, social custom, internalized all that, and slowly, slowly, the characters started to breathe. I would wake up and realize that Claire was going to the beach that day, or I would hear a snippet of conversation and know that Trudy would be making fun of the people talking.

I did not know where The Piano Teacher would end up, and many times towards the end, I was scratching my head trying to get my characters out of the sticky situations I had got them in. But I just kept at it.

As to the larger question, what is it that inspires authors to put pen to paper, I have no idea. A perverse push against the unknown, the unsaid? An irrepressible, foolhardy compulsion to say something in a world where too much is said already? For me, busy with life and children and living, writing provided a place for my old self to reside, something that was mine, and that I did not have to share. That was priceless.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0007286198
• ISBN 13: 9780007286195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352