The House of Doors

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Lesley missed her garden — the trees she planted - flowers, shrubs, their high ceilings in Cassowary House, her old busy life of the different committees she was on, but with time, she did adjust realizing she no longer cared about those things.

Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward by Oliver Soden, Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox, and Papyrus by Irene Vallejo.

Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction.

What does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts, long pauses, or sudden bursts of activity? The book tells of a fictionalized account of William Somerset Maugham's travels through the Federated Malay States in the 1920s. While in Penang, Maugham and Gerald Haxton, who is ostensibly his travelling secretary but is actually his lover, stay with Maugham's friend Robert Hamlyn. Robert and his wife Lesley are British expatriots living in the Federated Malay States. While staying with the Hamlyns, Maughan develops a friendship with Lesley.Somerset Maugham is a key character in the novel. What research did you conduct into his life and times, and what drew you to him in particular? Is it easier or harder to bring real people to life in fiction, and to develop them as characters? It’s based on true events. It’s a work of fiction; yet it features characters and events drawn from history…a murder in 1911 which Eng set in 1910 to coincide with Sun Yat-Sen’s extended stay in Penang. One of the standouts is the friendship that grows between Lesley and Willie. Lesley confides about her life in the straits — more than she thought she would tell him. And it was more than Willie expected to hear. Lesley had a personal connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Sun Yet Sen. ….