The Piano Teacher: A Novel

by Janice Y. K. Lee Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy

Overview

"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

The*New York Times*bestseller*

Janice Y.K. Lee's latest novel,*The Expatriates, is now available from Penguin

In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, Janice Y.K. Lee's 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 above all, the past.

Editorial Reviews

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Exotic Hong Kong takes center stage in this sumptuous novel, set in the 1940s and '50s. It's a city teeming with people, sights, sounds, and smells, and it's home to a group of foreign nationals who enjoy the good life among the local moneyed set, in a tight-knit social enclave distanced from the culture at large. Comfortable, clever, and even a bit dazzling, they revel in their fancy dinners and fun parties. But their sheltered lives take an abrupt turn after the Japanese occupation, and though their reactions are varied -- denial, resistance, submission -- the toll it takes on all is soon laid bare.

Enter Claire Pendleton from London. Months after her husband is transferred to Hong Kong in 1951, she accepts a position as a piano teacher to the daughter of a wealthy couple, the Chens. Claire begins to see the appeal of the sweltering city and is soon taken in by the Chen's driver, the curiously underutilized Will Truesdale. A handsome charmer with a mysterious limp, Will appears to be the perfect companion for Claire, who's often left to her own devices. But a further examination leaves her with more questions than answers.

An intricately woven tale of lives changed by historical events, Lee's debut brings this hothouse flower of a city alive with passion, and imagines characters both unforgettable and tragic. (Spring 2009 Selection)

Marie Arana

There is something altogether haunting here. Perhaps it's the way the story advances, peeling its way from layer to layer until the truth of each character lies bare. Perhaps it's the way Lee shows us that war can make monsters of us all. Most memorably, however, it's her portrait of Hong Kong, which having witnessed so much cupidity, moves on with splendid indifference. Like a piano under different fingers. Or a siren with another song.
—The Washington Post

Lisa Fugard

The Piano Teacher is laced with intrigue concerning a hoard of Chinese artifacts called the Crown Collection that went missing during the war (like the artworks owned by the real-life Hong Kong businessman Paul Chater). But while the inevitable "who did what and when and why" that dominates the last third of the novel is satisfying because it answers all those questions, readers will be more enthralled by Lee's depiction of Will's relationships with his two lovers—"Claire, with her blond and familiar femininity, English rose to Trudy's exotic scorpion"—and the unsparing way Lee unravels them.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Orlagh Cassidy narrates this tale of Hong Kong's ultra-wealthy Chinese and the British and American expats who share their high life until Japanese occupation in the early 1940s. After the war Claire, the American naïf who joins society through her role as a piano teacher, leaves her husband, is abandoned by her lover and settles into a quiet suburb far from the social whirl. Cassidy handles various accents expertly and has a keen sense of irony, but she is unsuited for more emotionally charged settings-the love scenes hardly seem romantic, and the horror, intrigue and collusion of the occupation period should have been recounted with more drama and less aloofness. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 8). (Feb.)

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Library Journal

Moving back and forth in time between the Japanese invasion of World War II and its aftermath ten years later, this debut novel by Lee, whose familiarity with her Hong Kong homeland is apparent in her vivid descriptions of the setting, is a sparsely written study of how people react under extraordinary circumstances. Actress/narrator Orlagh Cassidy's (Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict) fluid and charming performance helps listeners better engage with the tale's generally unsympathetic characters. Of interest to larger public libraries. [Audio clip available through www.blackstoneaudio.com; the Viking hc received a starred review, LJ10/1/08.-Ed.]
—Denise A. Garofalo

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171874599
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/13/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Part 1

May 1952

It started as an accident. The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire's purse. It had been on the piano and she had been gathering up the sheet music at the end of the lesson when she knocked it off. It fell off the doily (a doily! on the Steinway!) and into her large leather bag. What had happened after that was perplexing, even to her. Locket had been staring down at the keyboard, and hadn't noticed. And then, Claire had just…left. It wasn't until she was downstairs and waiting for the bus that she grasped what she had done. And then it had been too late. She went home and buried the expensive porcelain figurine under her sweaters.

Claire and her husband had moved to Hong Kong nine months ago, transferred by the government, which had posted Martin in the Department of Water Services. Churchill had ended the rationing and things were starting to return to normal when they had received news of the posting. She had never dreamed of leaving England before.

Martin was an engineer, overseeing the building of the Tai Lam Cheung reservoir, so that there wouldn't need to be so much rationing when the rains ebbed, as they did every several years. It was to hold four and a half billion gallons of water when full. Claire almost couldn't imagine such a number, but Martin said it was barely enough for the people of Hong Kong, and he was sure that by the time they were finished, they'd have to build another. "More work for me," he said cheerfully. He was analyzing the topography of the hills so that they could install catchwaters for when the rain came. The English government did so much for the colonies, Claire knew. They made the locals' lives much better but they rarely appreciated it. Her mother had warned her about the Chinese before she left -- an unscrupulous, conniving people who would surely try to take advantage of her innocence and goodwill.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from THE PIANO TEACHER Copyright © Janice Y. K. Lee, 2009

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