RollnSmoke Reviews: THE PIANO TEACHER

RollnSmokeRecords Review: THE PIANO TEACHER by Janice Y.K. Lee (Viking, 2009)

A debut novel released with (too) much acclaim by Hong Kong native and Harvard graduate Janice Y.K. Lee is set in Hong Kong, featuring one tryst that happens before and during the Japanese Occupation of the 1940’s and another that occurs post-occupation in the 1950’s. Both love affairs involve Will Truesdale, a displaced anglo without much identity, who hangs his hat on the largely unhappy affairs he has with Eurasion socialite Trudy Liange and later, with ex-pat Claire Pendleton. While Lee provides the reader with intriguing snippets of time and place, focusing on an often overlooked period during World War One -- the occupation of Hong Kong by Japanese forces -- the characters she portrays aren’t very complex; indeed, they’re not that interesting, even in their spiral downward from Gatsbyesque high-life to the daily dregs of life spent in a P-O-W camp. None of the characters are very nice to each other; in fact, they’re often cruel and always narcissistic, so that the reader has a hard time mustering sympathy for any of them. While the pace is quick and the storyline is compelling enough for the reader to want to finish the novel, the writing is plain and the unraveling of the plot is disjointed and sometimes melodramatic. 7.5/10