The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is written as a dual narrative: one storyline takes place in Hong Kong during World War II, and the other takes place roughly ten years later in 1951. I've never read a novel that takes place in Hong Kong at those times. In fact, I've read few novels (actually none that I can think of) that take place in Hong Kong at all.
This is one of the reasons I was first drawn to the book. That--and also that it looked sort of juicy--a war-time mystery with deception and affairs involved. Yum.

Lee is a writer who is good with evoking setting.  I could feel the oppressive heat of Hong Kong during the summer months, I could picture and feel the bustle of the streets, the beauty of the beaches. Later, when the war starts, she really captures the gruesome chaos of the "outside" and the barren desolation of the English prison camp.

The story begins with Claire, a newly married Englishwoman come to Hong Kong with her husband. She takes a job as a piano teacher in the home of a wealthy Chinese family, the Chens. I assume the novel is called The Piano Teacher because it is in part about the transformation of Claire after she moves to Hong Kong, from a dependent, naive woman, to a freed woman--a woman who has escaped the bounds of her small life and becomes worldly and independent. The story, in my mind, however, was REALLY about Will, the man with whom Claire has an affair.

Will serves as the connection to Lee's other narrative, which takes place ten years earlier. At that time, Will moves to Hong Kong as a young man, and falls for the experienced and wordly, vivacious and uncapturable Trudy, a beautiful half Portugese, half Chinese socialite who constantly parties and has a somewhat suspect past.. Trudy is just an amazing character. She is what really makes the novel worth reading, I think.Claire's story is really secondary to the Will/Trudy story. Certainly the Will/Trudy story is more compelling.

I could go into an anaylsis here--propose the idea that Claire's fall from innocence mirrors that of Will's--and that Trudy embodies the fallen from the get-go.. But I won't. I will say that I found the story of Trudy and Will moving and absorbing. I also learned a lot about Hong Kong during the time that it was colonized by the English, and about what happened to/in Hong Kong during WWII. I was less interested in Claire's story, though it provided an interesting glimpse at Hong Kong 10 years after the horror of WWII.
I gave the book an 8.5. Definitely worth a read.