The Piano Teacher: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: Hong Kong, Victor Chen, Miss Storch (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Former Elle editor Lee delivers a standout debut dealing with the rigors of love and survival during a time of war, and the consequences of choices made under duress. Claire Pendleton, newly married and arrived in Hong Kong in 1952, finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of Melody and Victor Chen, a wealthy Chinese couple. While the girl is less than interested in music, the Chens' flinty British expat driver, Will Truesdale, is certainly interested in Claire, and vice versa. Their fast-blossoming affair is juxtaposed against a plot line beginning in 1941 when Will gets swept up by the beautiful and tempestuous Trudy Liang, and then follows through his life during the Japanese occupation. As Claire and Will's affair becomes common knowledge, so do the specifics of Will's murky past, Trudy's motivations and Victor's role in past events. The rippling of past actions through to the present lends the narrative layers of intrigue and more than a few unexpected twists. Lee covers a little-known time in Chinese history without melodrama, and deconstructs without judgment the choices people make in order to live one more day under torturous circumstances. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker

This cinematic tale of two love affairs in mid-century Hong Kong shows colonial pretensions tainted by wartime truths. Will Truesdale, a rootless, handsome Briton, arrives in the colony in 1941, and is swept up by Trudy Liang, the blithe and glamorous daughter of a Shanghai millionaire and a Portuguese beauty. They quickly become inseparable, their days spent in a whirl of parties and champagne, but when the Japanese invade, Will is interned and Trudy resorts to increasingly Faustian methods to survive. After the war, Claire Pendleton, the na�ve wife of a British civil servant, arrives. She begins giving piano lessons to the daughter of a rich Chinese couple, and falls in love with their wounded and inscrutable driver: Will. Lee unfolds each story, and flits between them, with the brisk grace and discretion of the society she describes�a world in which horrors are adumbrated but seldom told.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Viking; BCE edition (January 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670020486
• ISBN-13: 978-0670020485
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,449 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could Have Been Great, January 15, 2009

By	Book Dork (Southern California) - See all my reviews

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The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee tells the story of English piano teacher Claire's involvement in a complex web of lies, love, politics and war in 1950's Hong Kong.
Enjoy:
- Lee does a nice job describing the tumultuous Hong Kong social elite pre, post and during World War II. Her quiet, elegant descriptive prose is definitely her strength.
- The reader must respect Lee's decision to not use the standard linear timeline most novels use.
- The treatment of nationality is interesting as well, considering the time period (1940s and 1950s) in which the book is set. The upper class was undeniably hypocritical in their discriminations; everything boiled down to money and status.
- Will Truesdale's character has a lot of depth (he truly is the main character of the novel, despite the title). He is the most human out of all the characters; I found myself very sympathetic towards him throughout the novel.

What Rains on Lee's Parade
- Her desire to be mysterious is too obvious; the vague dialogue is often unrealistic. This obviousness is also a fault when Lee does decide to divulge vital information; these portions of the book do not flow well at all.
- The novel is entitled The Piano Teacher, yet it truly isn't about her. She is solely device to divulge information; I think the novel could have actually done more effectively without her. The attempt to view the local situation from an outsider's perspective ends up more of a hindrance upon the reader.
- Lee doesn't develop the relationships and characters enough, with the exception of Will. Granted some characters need to be flat to show the trivialness of the Hong Kong upper class, some of the characters should have been given more time.
- I didn't appreciate the quick "wrap up" mentality at the end. It was forced and a bit boring.

That fact that this book lacks in certain areas is frustrating because it could have been a great book. It will be interesting to see what Lee writes next.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Never was fully engaged in the story, February 1, 2009

By	Maudeen Wachsmith "BeachReader" (Port Townsend, WA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Loving history as I do, this novel, set in WWII and post-WWII Hong Kong, would seem to be right up my alley. I also love books that have two stories molded into one book. Then you have the enticing cover. Even with one of these three, I would tend to be drawn to this novel. With all three, it would be a no-brainer. This was the book for me!

That said, I never could get fully engaged either with Claire's story or with Will and Trudy's. Although Claire would seem to be the more sympathetic of the three, none of the main characters were all that likeable. I tried with this book, I really did. But at my age there are too many other really good books out there to try. Librarian, author, and radio personality Nancy Pearl gave me permission to stop reading a book after 50 pages if it was, for want of a better word, boring. I even skimmed a bit farther into the book until I ended up skipping to the end. Thank you Nancy Pearl. You have saved me from many a worthless hour. Instead, I picked up another book with an Asian theme that also has a Hong Kong connection.

I am sorry to have to say I was not able to finish this book as it had all the hallmarks of a great read. So despite all the hoopla and the good reviews about The Piano Teacher, I can't, in all good conscience, recommend it.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful story written in an odd, disjointed style., January 13, 2009

By	P. Blackburn "mr. right now" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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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.