a debut novel by Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

Janice was raised in Hong Kong, of Korean heritage, educated at Harvard and she worked as an editor for Elle magazine before she started writing novels.... Three characters represent different cultures, timeframes and experience. Claire is the contemporary english wallflower, ready for life to unfold. In contrast, Trudy is a savvy eurasian, caught between cultures at the outbreak of a war that unravelled at many levels. Will is the charming and enigmatic man who spans both their worlds... The novel seesaws between 1941/2 and 1952, between the second world war and the Korean war and captures something of the political baggage of both. The reader is transported beyond their everyday world to the exotic east vs west complexity. I feel like I know Hong Kong and I have experienced the change from its British colonial past to its contemporary extension of China. I have heard locals talk from their own perspectives about the British and the Chinese in ways that I really appreciate. Yet I was quite shocked to read about the occupation of Hong Kong and the role of the Japanese. So it should not have come as a shock to read about the universal themes of love and betrayal - do wars really intensify the conditions that generate these extremes - it seems so - people are forced to make decisions in terrible circumstances and the compromises are more than most of us would accept - but the human emotions and condition remains the same. Perhaps the real appeal in this novel is its total believability about places and cultures I know too well. I can escape to a world more fractured than mine and feel the power of love and humanity. Only then, do I reflect on how lucky I am, at so many levels...