![]() ![]() War is the awful darkness at this novel's core, but there, too, is Trudy Liang, a fiercely willing prisoner of love. Lee, who grew up in Hong Kong and lived in New York, has a visceral understanding of cultural isolation and of the ruthless imperatives of race and class. ![]() Lee's intensely readable debut novel, The Piano Teacher, alternates between that nightmarish moment in history and a decade or so later, when Claire Pendleton, a peaches-and-cream-pretty, unhappily married young English piano teacher with a tenuous connection to Hong Kong's expatriate society, finds herself drawn to the ambivalent Will, a man in thrall to a ghost. All that is about to end, as Japanese forces herd the privileged into internment camps, and loyalty is undermined by pride, self-interest, and fear. ![]() And the last is Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang, a classic collection of short stories set in Hong Kong in the post-war era. The international community in this British colony is still riding high-obscenely wealthy, genially intolerant of the local population, intoxicated with power and prestige. The second is The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee, a novel about cross-cultural experience and a love story that transcends generations and borders. "I hope I don't destroy you," whispers the seductive Trudy Liang, a nervy, glamorous Hong Kong socialite, to Will Truesdale, a wildly attractive Englishman with a practiced aversion to love. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |