Piano Lessons

While reading “The Piano Teacher”, at a certain point I almost put it down, determining it wasn’t worth finishing. I’m glad I perservered because once the novel’s 1940s timeline reached the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, it became a much more absorbing and consistent read.

The story is a complex one that I won’t recount here, but suffice to say this is a novel about survival, specifically British Hong Kong residents during World War II’s Pacific Theater. Author Janice Lee deals in duality in several ways: The contrasts between the monied classes and the local, largely unskilled population and their interdependencies both before and during the war; the English and the Chinese citizens, all ostensibly British subjects but with vastly different expectations of themselves and one another; Chinese and expatriate culture; the choice to collaborate or to defy; the war and its aftermath, and so on.

Several of the characters are very well-drawn and author Lee paints their portraits in the manner of gradual disclosure. Claire Pendleton is a recent English 1950s arrival to Hong Kong and as she gets to know the city and its social milieu, we begin to learn about the past through flashbacks and seemingly casual conversation. Will Truesdale is a mysterious chauffeur for the wealthy Chen family, a family whose young daughter is Claire’s piano student. Claire begins an affair with him for reasons that are each their own, one to come to terms with the past and the other to escape the present.

Janice Lee has a fluent, descriptive style that shows both sensitivity and wisdom, allowing the reader to honestly assess the motivations of her actors. However, the writing is hindered by parallel timelines (one leading into WWII, the other in the 1950s — the term ‘flashback’ should be used with caution). Ultimately, I enjoyed the contrast of the two periods as well as the links between, but I found the novel flipped between the two too frequently and too quickly, not allowing the reader much to hold onto of the former while jumping to the latter. This leads to a clunky, disjointed style that is confusing and unnecessary. That coupled with the author’s withholding of much character motivation such as why the affair between Will and Claire when they seem so utterly unsuited and the backstories of the beautiful, vivacious Trudy Liang and her family — it makes for a frustrating, bewildering, and for much of its beginning, uninteresting read.

The novel has some technical flaws as well. Lee uses ellipses, asterisks, and page breaks seemingly interchangeably, further confusing the reader. Are we off to the other story? Are we still with Claire at the market or flashing forward to another scene entirely? The author also uses past and present tenses in a confusing way and will open a long paragraph using pronouns whose personages aren’t specified until later. There are several minor mistakes (“Hail Britannia” should be “Rule, Britannia”, etc.) and more subjectively, I wonder at the misleading title: A reader might choose “The Piano Teacher” to read a story about a music teacher, but this novel has almost nothing to do with music and only at the very end is this employment’s own mystery revealed. Also subjectively, I found the ending unsatisfying and a little hard to believe, particularly considering Claire’s background and recent experiences.

To Lee’s great credit however, Hong Kong is beautifully portrayed and is a character all its own. She has chosen an important period that due to history (Pearl Harbor, American victory over the Japanese, the teaching of history in this country, etc.) is largely misunderstood yet is very important, particularly regarding our modern understanding of China. The atrocities of the Japanese as well as the pettiness and generosity of the Hong Kong population are described in excellent, sometimes excruciating detail while never wallowing in depravity. Bravo. (For those who are interested in this subject, try Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking”.)

3.5 stars for a beautiful, operatic story that with some editorial tightening and technical polish would be first-rate.