Quietly, there is a lot going on in this book but because the writing has a 1940s/50s feel to it, it feels like the events glide past you.

The book is an imagining/fictionalising of how the short story ‘The Letter’ by W. Somerset Maugham was created. Lesley and her husband Robert are in Penang when Maugham and his secretary/lover visit for a fortnight. Maugham is known for his ‘stealing’ of other people’s stories and using them often with no changes so that everyone knows who it is about. He manages this without ever discussing himself or writing about homosexuality and so in a way this book is partly about the creative process of a great writer.

Lesley finds out that her husband is having an affair and eventually realises that it is with a man. This frees her to have her own affair with Arthur, one of the staff of Sun Yatsen a Chinese revolutionary leader whilst they are in Penang. Arthur collects doors from old temples and other buildings and hangs them in his house not as doors to use but as works of art. It is here that Arthur and Lesley meet. I did think that the revolutionary story was a little underdone in the book. Sun was present in Penang, collecting money for his work and then disappears only to reappear at the end successful in his overturning of the Emperor in China.

Whilst all of this was going on, Ethel, a friend of Lesley’s, kills her lover William Steward. I understand that this is a real event. Despite everyone believing that she would never be found guilty she is and is sent to prison. She is pardonned but told to leave the country. The real story is much darker and her husband and father do not come out of it well. The community of ex-pats want to forget her as quickly as they can, feeling that her crime of hiding that she is mixed race to be worse than the killing.

The story is told through 1st person for Lesley and 3rd person for Maugham and alternates so that we see the events through Lesley’s eyes and the descriptions of the place are lush and evoke all the senses.

This is a book about relationships loyalty and duty – about following your husband even when you do not want to go and reminding yourself why you fell in love with him in the first place. It is also about a society which is patriarchal and who talks about equality but doesn’t mean it for their wives and families.

I think this book is better than The Garden of Evening Mists.