Double Feature! Review: The Piano Teacher

Your eyes do not deceive you, children -- this is the second update this week! To what do you owe this joy?

A few things. First, I've got a huge library stack that I'm trying to get through quickly. Second, I'm going to be in Chicago for two weeks at the end of the month, and I highly doubt I'll be able to do much updating then. So I think if I just spoil you all you'll forgive me for being sparse.

Now then, on to the topic of this review. This book was another Barnes&Noble find that I eventually procured at the library, and like so many others of this genre, it took me completely by surprise.

Genre: historical fiction novel

Plot: Claire is a new bride in a new country (a phenomenon I myself will soon experience!). It's the 1950s, it's Hong Kong, and life is quite different from what Claire expected. She finds herself employed as a piano teacher to a wealthy local family, and is soon caught up in the aftermath of events that occurred during the Japanese occupancy in World War II. At the same time, Claire begins on a journey that will transform her from mousy and conventional into the exotic, independent woman she longs to be.

Structure: If I had to summarize it in one word, it would be jolting. Although the narration is consistently third-person, and is technically divided into three parts, the stability ends there. The story is told out of chronological order, jumping between the 1940s and the early 1950s. The author utilizes this in creating a superb air of suspense, and sometimes using it to lend an otherwise unimportant scene a foreboding, haunting aspect. This unique approach to storytelling is by far the author's greatest strength, and when combined with the rather unique setting (I've never read any other book about this particular time and place) makes this novel really stand out in my mind.

Oh, and there's also this huge plot twist.

Execution: Lee is very subtle; so subtle, in fact, that sometimes your forget how good she really is. She manages to describe just enough details to transport you, in Elizabeth Gilbert's words, "out of time, out of place, into a world you can feel on your very skin." And yet she does so without bogging us down in details. She focuses more on little moments, quiet revelations and gestures, for a lot of the novel's emotional punches. The best thing about her prose is that she writes almost the bare minimum, leaving--like all good Greek tragedies--a lot to the reader to imply or imagine. Strangely, the absence adds a richness that is hard to imitate.

Theme: Hong Kong in the 1940s and 50s, war, love, and also a missing treasure collection. It's almost like the plot of an Indiana Jones movie if it were written without Indiana Jones in mind.

Read this if you like historical fiction, or if you're in the mood for a quiet, but none the less exciting, thrill

4 out of 5 stars

Other works:
This is the author's first work. While poking around her website, though, I found her favorite books list! I think I'll be adding most of these to my own list, too.

If you liked this, you might also like:
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club