The Gift of Rain

Tan Twan Eng’s House of Doors (review here) was one of the best novels I’ve read in recent years. He’s not a prolific author, with only two other major works in print at present, this one being his debut novel, and I admit to a delay in reading it as I’ve felt World War II novels have reached saturation point, although the majority of them is based around the Nazis and Europe and the war with Japan is largely overlooked, certainly as it pertains to its effect on non-Western countries.
 
In the 1990s, a sick Japanese woman, Michiko, comes to the island of Penang off the coast of Malaysia, hoping to solve a mystery about a man she cared about a life time ago and she stays with the elderly Philip Hutton, who tells her his story.
 
Half-English, half-Chinese Philip is 16 when the war breaks out in late 1939. His wealthy merchant father and siblings are in Europe and he remains behind at the family’s lavish estate Istana. While they are away, Philip makes friends with Endo-san, a mysterious Japanese man who lives on a nearby small island. Endo-san begins to teach Philip the art of aikido, and the two form a strong bond, often travelling together around Malaya. After the family return and invasion by the Japanese seems inevitable, Philip is conflicted over duty and loyalties. The decisions he makes before, and during, the occupation of Penang will challenge him and make him ponder deeply on his place in the world and the highs and lows of human existence.
 
This powerful and confronting novel with its doomed characters and moral questions took me a long time to read, often having to put it aside after a few pages, but it is searingly memorable. The prose is intricate and thoughtful; some descriptions are graced with beauty, stoicism and philosophy, while others display in agonising detail all the horrors and depravity unleashed by war.
 
Some readers may find the reincarnation ideas a distraction from reality, but one has to bear in mind this is the East where spirituality and ways of thinking are often quite different from the more pragmatic Christian West. As Endo-san says, “Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.”
 
Five stars




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amazon.co.uk (the collected novels)

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