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Lee's story - though not an explicit detective story, like Ishiguro's - has plenty of mystery, providing surprises until its final pages, especially about the wartime events that occasion the puzzling relationships and behaviors of the characters during the 1950s. Lee's subject matter echoes elements of Kazuo Ishiguro's 2000 novel 'When We Were Orphans.' Though Ishiguro's novel was set in Shanghai, it likewise concerned upper-crust British civilians on the eve of the Second World War. The result is entirely engrossing, the material about the two romances dovetailing for the complex, dark story of the wartime experiences of Chinese collaborators, Japanese officials, imprisoned socialites and those allied civilians who worked a deal to keep themselves out of the Japanese internment camps. The drama of Will's two affairs emerges in a braided narrative, sections from the early 1940s alternating with sections from the 1950s, and the point of view roaming from character to character but focusing primarily on the hearts and minds of Will and Claire. 'The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire's purse.' Soon enough, Claire is purposefully swiping small items - a silk scarf, Irish napkins - from Victor and Melody Chen, the wealthy parents of Locket, Claire's (only) piano student. 'It started as an accident,' the novel opens. Somewhat surprisingly, her 'taking' begins with actual theft. An emotional 'have-not' among those who 'have,' Claire slowly acquires things in Hong Kong: love, experience, information. Her movie star elan captivates in peacetime during the war, the breezy glamour is a tool for survival.Ī decade later, Will encounters a very different but equally vivid creature, Claire Pendleton, an initially shy, rather naive wife of a British engineer. Will is swept into the orbit of Trudy Liang, a vivacious, beautiful woman who alternately charms and appalls the fashionable society of which she is very much the center, even though, as a Eurasian, she is also a perpetual outsider.

The man in the romances is the same: Will Truesdale, a handsome Brit who just happens off a boat and into Hong Kong and never leaves. Both tales involve denizens of Hong Kong's monied expat community, though one takes place during the Second World War and the other 10 years later, when everyone (more or less) is a damaged survivor, having been complicitous in or self-destructively resistant to the events of 19.

Lee's first novel, 'The Piano Teacher,' is a bargain, because it has not one but two epic romances. Lee Viking 328 pages $25.95ĭoes one read grand love stories in fiction anymore? If not, Janice Y.K.

The piano teacher lee