The Piano Teacher - Softcover

Lee, Janice Y K

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143116533 ISBN 13: 9780143116530

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2009

Synopsis

Paperback. Pub Date :2009-11-1 Pages: 328 Publisher: Guangdong filmmakers Audiovisual Communication Co. A rare and exquisite story ... Transports you out of time. out of place. into a world you can feel on your very skin .-Elizabeth Gilbert In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient. Janice YK Lees debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942. Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang. a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine. impossible choices emerge-between love and safety. courage and survival. the present. and ab...

About this title

Review:

"Riveting . . . This season's Atonement."
--Elle

"Laced with intrigue."
--The New York Times Book Review, "Editor's Choice"

"Evocative, poignant, and skillfully crafted, The Piano Teacher is more than an epic tale of war and a tangled, tortured love story. It is the kind of novel one consumes in great, greedy gulps, pausing (grudgingly) only when absolutely necessary. . . . If we measure the skill of a fiction writer by her ability to create characters and atmosphere so effortlessly real, so alive on the page, that the reader feels a sense of participatory anxiety--as if the act of reading gives one the power to somehow influence the outcome of purely imaginary events--then Lee should be counted among the very best in recent memory."
--Chicago Tribune

"A shattering, immensely satisfying debut."
--People (4 stars)

"War, love, betrayal--an exquisite fugue of a first novel . . . intensely readable."
--O, The Oprah Magazine

"Lee unfolds the story with the brisk grace and discretion of the society she describes."
--The New Yorker

"Sensual and gripping."
--Good Housekeeping

"Janice Lee delivers a standout debut."
---The Boston Globe

"The novel is sustained by elegant prose and a terrific sense of place. As Graham Greene evoked Vietnam in The Quiet American, Lee, born and raised in Hong Kong long after the war, captures the city as it was during World War II, its glittering veneer barely masking the panic and corruption beneath."
--The Miami Herald

"A compelling portrait of the devastating choices people make in order to survive."
--TimeOut New York

"Lee tells two engrossing love stories. . . . Just hide your phone before cracking this one open--or risk calling your ex."
--Marie Claire

"Lee delivers a standout debut [with] layers of intrigue and more than a few unexpected twists."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A lush examination of East-West relations."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Lee has created the sort of interesting, complex characters, especially in Trudy, that drive a rich and intimate look at what happens to people under extraordinary circumstances."
--Booklist

"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 in your very own skin."
--Elizabeth Gilbert

"One of the most insightful, elegant, and atmospheric novels I've read in a long time. Janice Lee is nothing short of brilliant and her novel is impossible to put down."
--Gary Shteyngart

"Rarely does one encounter a debut work as beguiling and assured as Janice Lee's The Piano Teacher. Rich with intrigue, romance, and betrayal, this wonderfully written, utterly captivating novel dazzles with its sharp-eyed renderings of beau monde Hong Kong as it is plunged into the crucible of war. With its fascinating interplay of East and West and wide cast of effervescent characters . . . this is a truly transporting--and indeed irresistible--work of fiction."
--Chang-Rae Lee

"Compelling . . . A persuasive re-creation of a time and place."
--Penelope Lively

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: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143116533
• ISBN 13: 9780143116530
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368