1-60286-024-6
—David A. Beronä, Plymouth State University, NH.
By GEETA SHARMA JENSEN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel book editor
"The Gift of Rain," by Tan Twan Eng (Weinstein Books, $23.95)
Disbelief may also flirt with us at times - but engagingly - in this Man Booker Prize finalist with a whiff of genre. Thrilling, introspective and a wee bit NewAge-y with its martial arts philosophy, "Gift" is mainly the story of aging and reclusive Philip Hutton, the son of a Chinese mother and an English businessman settled on the Malaysian island of Penang. Hutton revisits the horrific Japanese invasion of his island home when the woman who loved his Japanese martial arts teacher arrives at the Hutton family mansion to find out how her lover died. The novel is a meditation on the deals humans make to survive, as well as the bond between a pupil and his teacher in an Asian culture. Tan Twan Eng's lucid writing carries along the story effortlessly.
E-mail: gjensen@journalsentinel.com
TOM HORGEN, Minneapolis Star Tribune
In his debut novel, "The Gift of Rain," Tan Twan Eng gives us the painful gift of a fully realized account of Japanese imperialism during World War II.
It's an epic journey into the eye of the Asian storm, filled with the dread and turmoil that came with Japan's invasion of its neighbors. At the same time, Eng's tale overflows with mesmerizing beauty and wonder.
To personalize the magnitude of the events swirling around Asia at the time, Eng tightens his focus on the travails of a 16-year-old boy living in Penang, a tiny island off the coast of the Malay Peninsula and the author's own place of birth. In 1939, the boy, Philip Hutton, is the alienated half-Chinese, half-white son of one of the region's richest trading barons. He's shunned by both the island colony's British elite and its Asian community.
Philip thinks his life has changed for the better after befriending Endo, a mysterious Japanese man who rents a house from his absent father. In Endo, Philip finds a gentle, doting father figure who trains him in the discipline of Zen Buddhism and the martial-arts practice of aikido. In exchange, Philip eagerly shares the secrets and history of Penang, oblivious to his sensei's hidden agenda. Endo is a spy gathering information for the coming Japanese invasion. But he's more than just a spy; he's a victim of coercion and therefore a complex and more interesting character.
At 435 pages, Eng is unraveling a true saga here, writing in great detail about the historical milieu that his fictional characters inhabit. He matches his ambitious narrative with highly stylized prose. Eng is a vivid writer in love with the descriptive power of strong similes, even ones that seem a bit overstated. Take this description of a cobra that slithers past Philip and Endo as they visit an ancient Penang temple. "Its tongue stabbed out to taste the air, its scales shining like a thousand trapped souls." The mood is unsettling -- we get it. As we move deeper into the novel, Eng's embellished prose begins to match the widening scope of the story. What started as an eloquent tale about friendship transforms into a frightful chronicle of betrayal and survival. The Japanese invade, unleashing a wave of violence that brings the peninsula under its imperial rule. Philip had heard about Japan's massacre of China's northern city of Nanking -- where about 200,00! 0 civilians were killed, many of the women raped and mutilated. He thought the war would never reach beyond China, but now it suddenly surrounds him, thanks in part to his friendship with Endo. Caught in the middle, Philip agrees to collaborate with Penang's new masters in order to save the lives of his friends and family.
It would be easy for Eng to spend the second half of the book recounting the killings and torture that Japan inflicted on its subjugated states. But the author is judicious when describing such suffering, leaving much of the violence to our imagination. Passages like this are brutal enough: "Families and villagers caught in the path of the troops were raped and bayoneted, sometimes not even in that order."
Within this horror, Eng still manages to keep a current of wonder running through his novel. The book's title is a reference to what an old soothsayer once told Philip, that he was born with "the gift of rain" and that the narrative of his life -- one filled with so much triumph and tragedy -- was already written out in prophecy. Eng seems interested in how the act of storytelling affects people's lives. Much of the novel is narrated by Philip himself, but as an old man who has buried the tragedy of his youth deep in the recesses of his mind. Who could blame him?
There is a moment in "The Gift of Rain" when Philip and his Chinese grandfather argue about the importance of memory. Philip tells his grandfather that "No one escapes history." But the wise old man reminds Philip that history is often only remembered if those who care about the past keep it alive.
It's good then that Tan Twan Eng has given the literary world "The Gift of Rain."
Tom Horgen • 612-673-7909
A Review by Gerry Donaghy
"I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me." So begins Tan Twan Eng's novel set in Penang, a small island off the Malaya peninsula prior to the start of World War II. Actually, the novel is set in the present day, with an elderly Phillip Hutton, the Chinese-English scion of a successful businessman, reflecting on his life. This act of remembrance is triggered by the arrival of a stranger bearing an ancient samurai sword that once belonged to his Aikido sensei Hayato Endo. Endo was a Japanese diplomat who rented an island from Hutton's father and is now buried there. This visit forces Hutton to reconcile the ghosts of his past that he has wrestled with for over fifty years.
As the novel is set in 1939, and features Japanese and Chinese characters, a reasonably educated reader can sense that the story is destined for tragedy, and Gift of Rain is rife with it. However, between these moments of absolute heartbreak are passages of dazzling lyricism that explore the nature of honor and loyalty to family and nation.
Eng's writing is as fluid and graceful as the aikijutsu practiced by the narrator, elegantly describing a place and time that is at once vividly real and fantastically alien. The island of Penang is a patchwork of different nationalities and cultures that Eng effortlessly brings to life:
And there were the smells, always the smells that remain unchanged even to this day -- the scents of spices drying in the sun, sweetmeats roasting on charcoal grills, curries bubbling on fiery stoves, dried salted fish swaying on strings, nutmeg, pickled shrimps -- all these swirled and mixed with the scent of the sea, fusing into a pungent concoction that entered us and lodged itself into the memory of our hearts.
The effect of Eng's prose is evocative and instantly transports the reader to a destination that only exists in fading memories and imagination.
No less effective are Eng's descriptions of the wisdom and serenity provided through the narrator's experience of martial arts, which are his sole refuge during the impossibly cruel period of history he is witnessing. Hutton's daily practice mirrors his own personal growth. Early in his training, Endo-san tells his student, "Feel, open up, be aware of everything. If anything goes wrong, if my technique is faulty or if I fail you, then at the very least you are in a position to protect yourself and fall safely." Not only is Endo describing a core tenant of all martial arts, he is providing his pupil with invaluable advice on how to confront the choices he'll have to make once the inevitable Japanese invasion begins.
Even for the non-martial artist, there is much to admire in The Gift of Rain. While the relationship between master and disciple is the novel's crux, there is an intricately crafted story of a young man's rise to adulthood, his discovery of family and the community around him, and a lucidly conveyed sense of history that is there for the reader to discover. This is the first book that I've gone back and re-read immediately upon completion, and one thing that struck me is that the plot moves along swiftly, but not at the expense of characterization or language. Just as the martial artist strives to move in an economic yet effective manner, there are few wasted words to be found in this novel. There is, however, a multitude of riches to be unearthed.
It is not uncommon for authors to begin or end tours up in the Northwest corner where Seattle lies: down the West Coast from here and then to points east, or from back that way to California and then up, we in bookstores here often get people just starting out, trying to figure rhythm and pacing, or so at the end of things, they might be reading from work-in-progress instead of the book they're out stumping for. So it commonly goes.
It was a great surprise then, this past Tuesday, when Weinstein Books' Camille March (an Elliott Bay alum) brought author Tan Twan Eng by in the afternoon, before he would later read at the Seattle Public Central Library. Not only, we knew, was this the very beginning of Mr. Eng's brief (two-city) tour, but it was his first day ever in the U.S. We knew he was coming from overseas - a Malaysian barrister (by education and, until recently, practice) born on the Malaysian island of Penang, and now based in both Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town, South Africa - but had no idea this was his first twenty-four hours in North America.
Tan Twan Eng is the author of The Gift of Rain (Weinstein), a debut novel first published in the UK by Myrmidon, a small house. It's an extraordinary tale, set on Penang, mostly before and during World War II, a time when it was still the British colony of Malaya, though over the course of the book, also occupied by Japan. It's largely told and seen from the eyes of a young man named Philip Hutton, youngest son of an English family with longstanding business interests in Penang. He is apart from all others in his family: alone of all, he is half-Chinese, son of a second marriage by his father. He has a presence in worlds no one else in his family does. How and where he belongs - who chooses him and who he choses - is key, as this book deftly develops. Young Philip becomes an aikido student to a young Japanese man, who also turns out to be a spy for the Japanese. Fate in all sorts of ways, unfolds. It's a book with horror and great tenderness beauty, beauty, devotion, and betrayal. It's about choices and consequences. The place - physically, psychologically, emotionally - is conveyed with delicacy and strength.
Later, we would learn, it was barely picked up for sale in the UK - largely passed over (for subject matter and that its publisher is small). Its a novel I knew little of until seeing it appear on the MAN Booker Prize longlist last year. One's curiosity is always raised by what's on that list - what books we'll have seen, or seen traces of, over here in the U.S. It didn't appear to be on any U.S. publishers' lists (big or small) as far as could be seen. A colleague elsewhere, prone also to looking for the missed thing, and I exchanged our mutual curiosity, especially once some reading up was done on The Gift of Rain's story.
There is perhaps some perversity here - though not able to keep up with all (even the all good) that comes my way in terms of advance copies, manuscripts and such, there is that hunter/gatherer part that still wants to go out and find things for oneself. It could be a customer, an article or news item, or, in this case, a kindred spirit in the business, helping point something out. I ordered copies from the UK which, upon I arrival, I gave good perusal to, but then put it in the same pile that had other wonders awaiting attention.
Sometime in Decemeber, as catalogs and lists were arriving for the spring, there, in the Weinstein Books list, was The Gift of Rain. Aha - our friends Judy Hottensen, Camille, Rob Weisbach (still there at the time) had now found it. In Louisville, at the ABA Winter Institute in January, Judy was talking it up, surprised that a few of us had already known about it. Her urging, though (for whatever was said earlier about going and finding things, there is still the correlating prod which one is keen to comply with, being friends and esteemed colleagues that are doing the prodding).
As readers, those of us who undertook The Gift of Rain were more than rewarded. I couldn't think of a book that had taken me the places this one did quite as any other had for some long time. Others felt the same way. Even without the prospect of a possible author visit, Holly Myers at our place, Elliott Bay, picked it for our "Maiden Voyage" first-edition, first novel subscription book club; I would later hear that the Book Passage also selected it for its similar program. I gave an advance copy to a very good customer of our store - a great reader who loves internationally-set, serious work, who travels a lot, and heads one of the city's most important arts institutions - and she raved about it. And has kept commenting on it, now some months later, saying it was one of those which really stayed with you.
Part of Tan Twan Eng's time in the store was spent signing the many copies that would go to the Maiden Voyage subscribers - and to his getting to poke around. This being his first day in the U.S., it seemed likely this was his first U.S. bookstore - or, in his words, bookshop. His lawyerly reserve warmed up more and more - first in the store, then at the evening's reading at the library. (He came into the store in a tie; by the evening, the tie was off ... he learns quickly).
That evening, he gave a reading of great charm and care. He read two passages, then gave himself to a lively round of questions. A number in the audience had read it, thus bringing that knowledge - of a place that not so many in the U.S. have direct knowledge of - to the discussion. In those comments, and in those of others who've read the book, I found myself looking for comparisons, especially taking into view the modest (but expected) size of the audience attending. One night it took me to was 1989, when Kazuo Ishiguro came through, pre-Booker Prize, for The Remains of the Day. A modest gathering there was that night, but you felt something in the air with that book. So it was this evening with Twan and The Gift of Rain. I said something of this in introducing him - when Ishiguro came a year later, for the paperback, hundreds were on hand. I can imagine that with this book, if it gets picked up as it should. The audience gave a collective 'wow' when I said it was his first day in the U.S. Here he was.
In the q&a, some of Twan's most moving comments came with talk of writing the book. He wrote it in South Africa, where he had gone after the lawyer work he was doing in Kuala Lumpur was getting too interesting and dangerous (he was working on intellectual property and piracy issues, was starting to have to mess with organized elements, etc.) The longing so palpably evident in the book was drawn out by his being so far from home. He described a desert place he was, how he missed the clockwork, predictably timed arrival of the tropical rains back in Penang. Sitting inside writing, he would hear a sound, run out thinking rain was falling, only to see the bare sky above. He also described missing the verdant lushness of home.
One hopes there will be more visits back to Seattle - and elsewhere in the U.S. This is a writer, one way or another, for readers to watch. On this quick, portentous-feeling visit, Seattle was nowhere near tropically warm. But the green lushness here, not found so commonly elsewhere in the U.S., particularly this wet and grey spring we've grumbled mightily about, the flowers and blooms and blossoms ... all felt more than usual, like fragrant, vivid gifts of rain
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer
(05-19) 11:12 PDT , (AP) -- "The Gift of Rain" (Weinstein Books, 448 pages, $23.95), by Tan Twan Eng: Set on the Malaysian island of Penang in 1939, "The Gift of Rain" offers a look at the life of 16-year-old Philip Hutton — half British, half Chinese — who feels like an outsider in his family. Lonely and alienated, he strikes up an unexpected friendship that will set the course of his life. Philip and Michiko Murakami both love a man they met in their youth and both lost long ago. Michiko visits Philip in his old age. In her dying days, she shows up on his doorstep and they share their stories, learning more about themselves and the nature of love along the way.
The man they both loved is Hayto Endo, a Japanese diplomat who moves onto a small island near Philip's house in the days before World War II. Philip finds the acceptance he craves in Endo and begins to be trained by him in the discipline of aikido, which teaches not only a deadly martial art but a rigid code of honor and loyalty.
As the friendship deepens, to the disapproval of Philip's father and sister, Philip shows Endo around Penang, pointing out the best views of the harbor, the railroads, the island's roads. When the war finally hits Penang and the Japanese invade, Philip realizes he has been used by his friend and teacher, who is a Japanese spy. His bitterness is not something he can maintain, however. While his brother goes to war and his sister and father fiercely resist the invaders, Philip chooses another path, deciding to work with the Japanese in the hope that he can thereby protect his family.
"I was choosing a path that had the strongest chance of saving all of us, all of my family, and I would take it," Philip says. "There was a war on and surely no one could blame me — or would even remember when it was all over." Of course, people did care and remember.
For one thing, many feel he is too eager to help the Japanese. The first thing Philip is told to do by his new masters is show his respect to a picture of the emperor. "I knew what was required and so I bowed low and respectfully to it."
Eng's graceful prose evokes a time and place that is little known or remembered now, making it both exotic and familiar, and his beautiful narrative is woven with strong images and characters.
He wonders between extraordinary beliefs — "I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me" — and familiar emotions. "The Gift of Rain" is a gift to read.
Donna Marchetti
The Gift of Rain" sends the reader back into the world of Somerset Maugham - the waning British Empire, the simmering discord between classes and races, the thick tropical surroundings that are both beautiful and suffocating - but at a different angle. Maugham cast a cynical eye on human nature and its frailties; Tan Twan Eng looks upon them with compassion, like a creator might view the imperfections of his handiwork.
He sets his story on the Malaysian island of Penang just before and during the Japanese occupation of World War II.
The narrative voice belongs to Philip Hutton, speaking in flashbacks. He is the only child of his British father's second marriage, to a Chinese woman who died young. Philip is 16 when he meets Hayato Endo, a Japanese aikido master isolated on a small island rented to him by Philip's father. Left largely on his own while his father and half-siblings attend to business abroad, Philip befriends Endo and becomes his pupil.
While the island's British community blindly clings to its conviction that the Japanese will not attack, Philip knows that an invasion is inevitable. Worse, he suspects that Endo is involved, and he is torn between his love for his teacher and his loyalty to his country and kin.
When the Japanese attack, Philip strikes a bargain: He will offer his services as a translator - he has learned Japanese from Endo - and in return his family will not be interred with the rest of the British. But the life of a collaborator is complicated, and soon another deal must be negotiated, this time with the Communist resistance. Playing each side against the other is dangerous - and costly.
Eng's writing is luminous and dreamy. He is never in a hurry to tell Philip's story; he lingers over details ("Far away the surf raced along the sand, hissing as it melted into the beach"), just as the 72-year-old Philip recalling his youth delights in the memory of a scent or a color. Even violence is meted out with a certain poetic beauty, and though the particulars of the Japanese occupation of Penang are fictional, the larger picture rings true to history.
This is a grandly old-fashioned book in its scope and lushness, in its lack of irony, in its preoccupation with loyalty and duty and the moral quicksand to which they sometimes lead.
"The Gift of Rain" is a rich and rewarding novel.
Marchetti is a critic in Cleveland Heights.
To reach Donna Marchetti:
books@plaind.com
'Gift of Rain' bestows lessons during times of love and war
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
All is fair in love and war. Sure, it's a cliché, but it's constantly acquiring new resonance.
A noteworthy case in point is Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain. A good chunk of this glorious novel, a nominee for last year's Booker Prize, takes place during World War II. But what it reveals about the human capacity for acceptance and grace, even under the most trying conditions, transcends time and circumstance.
The focal relationship in Rain is as deep, sensual and uncompromising as any romantic or military union, though it doesn't really qualify as either. It is 1939 and Philip Hutton, the only child of a British trader and his late Chinese wife, is 16 and living in Penang when he meets a mysterious Japanese diplomat.
Hayato Endo, or Endo-san, as Philip calls him, soon forms an intense bond with the teenager. He teaches Philip his language and imparts key aspects of his cultural and spiritual traditions, including the complex, rigorous art of aikido. But as the Japanese invade Malaya, and Endo-san's identity is clarified, Philip learns the price of this education — not only for himself, but for his dad, stepsiblings and their community — may be much higher than he anticipated.
Many years later Philip is visited by a woman who, at 75, is a few years his senior. She leads him to ponder the challenges and contradictions embedded in his friendship with Endo-san and in the war. Michiko Murakami also knew Endo-san well, although in a very different manner.
Eng artfully juggles Philip's vivid recollections of his youth with chapters set in the present, and these three central characters provide rich lessons about the futility and inevitability of violence and the necessity of love and sacrifice in their many forms.
Rain is a gift indeed, as robustly absorbing as it is achingly poignant.
The Gift of Rain, a debut novel by Tan Twan Eng ($23.95, Weinstein Books) attracted accolades well before its publication in May. It was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and is likely to sweep up others as an evocation of Malaya just before and during the tumult of the Second World War. Its sweep of history takes in China, Japan, British and Malayan cultural cross-pollination as Tan provides a riveting, poignant story about a young man’s unwitting role in a tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits. This is truly an epic novel in all respects. From its first sentence, “I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me” to its last, this evocative retrospective reaches back to 1939 and involves characters so finely drawn they take on lives that clash despite the deep ties between them. Mark this to be a novel you must read before the summer ends.
&mdash Alan Caruba, founding member of the National Book Critics Circle
The intricacies of love ensnarled by loyalty, war
A young man befriended by a Japanese diplomat tries to reconcile betrayal in the relationship.
The Gift of Rain, which was long-listed for last year's Booker Prize, is about love.
Not romance. Not sex. Love, pure and anything but simple. Beautifully written and deeply moving, Tan Twan Eng's debut novel is one of the best books I've ever read. Philip Hutton is 16 when Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat, pays a visit to Istana, the Hutton family estate on the island of Penang, off the coast of what is now Malaysia. The Huttons are a wealthy British colonial family. Philip's father, brothers and sister are in England for the summer. Philip is the youngest child, by his father's second wife, who was Chinese. Philip has chosen to stay at home, because being of mixed race has not made visits to England pleasant for him. "I was a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither."
It is 1939.
The book opens when Philip, in his 70s, receives a visit from Michiko Murakami, who is about his own age. She has just received, 50 years after it was written, a letter from Endo. With the letter had come Endo's Nagamitsu sword, a companion to one he had given Philip. Michiko wants to know what became of the man both she and Philip loved - and who loved them.
This is, for Philip, "the moment I had been waiting for. Fifty years I had waited to tell my tale, as long as the time Endo-san's letter took to reach Michiko." Like the letter, "the life I had lived was folded, only a blank page exposed to the world, emptiness wrapped around the days of my life. . . . And so, for the first and last time, I gently unfolded my life. . . . "
Endo paid that initial visit to Istana in order to borrow a boat. He had rented an island from Philip's father and his boat had been washed away by the tide. Philip offers him his own boat, and in gratitude Endo invites him to come along and have dinner. When Philip tells him his name, Endo recognizes it as one he had seen carved in a rock on the island.
Philip spends the night on the island, and in the morning Endo introduces him to aikido. He invites Philip to become his pupil. This is an honor and a privilege. Acceptance involves total commitment and loyalty. Philip accepts. Over the next few weeks, student and teacher bond, as Endo has Philip show him around the Malayan peninsula. They visit the Huttons' summer residence, atop a mountain overlooking all of Penang Island. They visit Kuala Lumpur. Philip shows Endo the bicycle trails through the jungle. And all the while Endo takes photos.
It is a much-matured Philip his family encounters on their return. And things seem to be going well. Philip's Chinese aunt brings about a meeting between Philip and his Chinese grandfather, who had disowned Philip's mother for marrying his father. Philip forms a deep friendship with Kon, the son of a Chinese clan leader. Kon also is a student of aikido and his teacher and Endo are old friends.
By now, though, war has broken out, as Endo had told Philip it would. Endo also tells him that the Japanese will invade Malaya. One of Philip's brothers joins the Royal Navy. The other - along with his sister's fiancé - is interned by the invaders. His sister disguises herself as a young man by cutting her hair. His father is forced to run his company for the Japanese. And Philip? He becomes the assistant to the Japanese second-in-command: Hayato Endo. But soon he is also passing along what he learns to Kon's guerrillas.
Teacher and student turn out to have roles that mirror each other. Just as Philip has agreed to work with the occupying force in order to win some measure of security for his family, so Endo is there because his father had opposed Japan's militarist faction. He had been banished from the court and imprisoned. Endo accepted his assignment in order to ensure that his father, now ill, would receive proper medical care. Michiko is the girl he left behind.
Tan Twan Eng's debut is a grand old-fashioned novel, intricately plotted, filled with incident and vivid, fascinating characters - to say nothing of genuinely hateful villains. The Japanese military does not come off well.
The quiet and unnoticed heroism of those who try their best to do their duty under the worst of circumstances brings to mind the novels of Joseph Conrad, but The Gift of Rain has a religious dimension that Conrad lacks. Elements of Buddhism and Taoism are so marvelously integrated into the story that you have no trouble suspending disbelief about reincarnation and soothsayers and ghosts.
But it is the agony of the love that Philip and Endo have for each other - and have always had, as it happens - that gives the book its soul: "I could feel no trace of anger towards him," Philip confesses, "only despair. It felt almost as though I had been expecting it. He had betrayed my innocence, but at the same time had replaced it with knowledge and strength and love."
Anyone who thinks the novel is in decline should read this one.
&mdash Reviewed by Frank Wilson
Clashing Cultures and Shifting Allegiances
Tan Twan Eng's haunting debut novel is a complex tale of identity and betrayal, steeped in the culture of colonial Malaya. Or, more specifically, the culture clash. "The Gift of Rain" pivots on the fulcrum of the Second World War, unfolding its mystery both forward and backward through time. This lushly multi-layered novel, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, is sure to become a book club favorite.
When readers first meet Philip Hutton, he is an old man, a former aikido champion and master teacher, left alone with his memories. There are oblique, mysterious hints of some dark loss.
An unexpected visitor with close ties to his past forces him to confront the regrets and betrayals that haunt him. Most of the novel works backward, probing the choices Hutton made as he came of age in Penang in the years before World War II. At the center of his story is the memory of Endo-san, the Japanese diplomat who taught Hutton aikido. Endo-san was more than a sensei of martial arts, and Philip's bond to him was one of duty, obedience, love and treachery in this life -- and perhaps previous lives.
Rich in a sense of history and place, the novel unfolds its secrets gradually. Readers who loved the lyrical prose of "The Kite Runner" or "The God of Small Things" will immerse themselves in Tan Twan Eng's poetic descriptions of Penang and its nearby jungles during the years surrounding the war.
The son of a wealthy British trader and a Chinese woman, Hutton is uncertain of his place in his English family and with the larger expatriate culture of Penang. Endo-san gives Philip a sense of grounding, of purpose and place. Through Endo-san, he can begin to reconcile his Chinese heritage with his English one.
However, during the brutal Japanese occupation, Hutton's reliance on his sensei and allegiance to the Japanese become complicated. Torn between his bond to his sensei and his need to keep his family safe, all the choices available to him will end in betrayal. He will either betray the fragile peace he has made with his mixed heritage, or he will betray the deep bond between sensei and student, even as Endo-san's allegiances become questionable.
"The Gift of Rain" rises and falls with the slow grace of aikido, one of the "softer" styles of martial arts. Rather than attack using force, aikido focuses on learning to fall correctly, and to use the attacker's momentum to counter and neutralize the attack. With this in mind, the slow pace of the story becomes a philosophical choice, revealing the pattern of actions and complex loyalties with a meditative clarity. The image of the ukemi, the special grace a student of aikido uses to absorb the force of a fall and to rise unharmed, recurs throughout the book.
Because Hutton tells most of the story to expunge the memories that haunt him, the rhythms of the narrative become haunting in their own right. Readers with the patience to await the story's slow unfolding will be rewarded with a dark and beautiful tale of shifting allegiances.
&mdash Elizabeth Willse
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng: Deft novel proves the past can't be buried
By ALAN CHEUSE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News books@dallasnews.com
A Booker Prize nominee, this deft first novel by Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng stands as a lavish demonstration of the truth of William Faulkner's dictum, "The past is never dead ... It's not even past."
The Gift of Rain opens in present-day Penang, an island off the coast of northern Malaysia, a tale told by Philip Hutton, the half-British, half-Chinese heir to a large trading and commodities company founded by his English father.
The author makes the scene and setting quite inviting. "I have never seen the light of Penang replicated anywhere else in the world," his narrator says, "bright, bringing everything into razor-sharp focus, yet at the same time warm and forgiving, making you want to melt into the walls it shines on, into the leaves it gives life to ... " And then Philip opens the door of his large island house to a visitor and everything begins to shift and change. The visitor is a Japanese woman, dying from the long-term effects of the atomic blast at Hiroshima, who as it turns out was the childhood sweetheart of a Japanese diplomat named Hayato Endo.
In long reveries with the visiting Japanese woman that make up a tale within the tale, Philip turns his mind toward the past. We meet Endo, as Philip did, during the summer when all of the Sutton family except for him left for a six-month visit to England: a month out by boat, four months there, a month for return, ah, slow boats from China or anywhere! For the adolescent Philip this becomes his aikido summer, because Endo, recently posted from Tokyo to Malaysia, has rented a small island property from the elder Hutton. As a seeming gift, the older man trains the boy in this yoga with sword-play and punches.
The boy becomes stronger by the week, even as Endo takes on a larger role in his life as teacher and surrogate parent. "I was a child born between two worlds," Philip says, "belonging to neither. From the very beginning I treated Endo-san not as a Japanese, not as a member of a hated race, but as a man, and that was why we forged an instant bond."
However, when the Japanese invade Malaysia, Philip's bond with Endo leads him to become a collaborator, estranging himself from his English family and opening himself to the spite and hatred of the Malaysians and local Chinese.
How the war he fights within himself plays out against the backdrop of the war spreading across South Asia makes the book an engrossing story of interlocking worlds.
NPR commentator Alan Cheuse's next novel, To Catch the Lightning, will be published in October.
Through catastrophe, redemption
Review by Arlene McKanic
One of the lesser-known horrors of war is the way it can pervert human relationships and loyalties, whether between parents and children, teachers and students, or friends. In Tan Twan Eng's amazing debut novel, which was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, we're presented with societies whose sense of loyalty, duty and honor are already intense, and easily twisted by the depravities of World War II. The protagonist of The Gift of Rain is Philip Hutton, the youngest child of a British planter and his young Chinese wife, who, like Eng, was born and raised in Penang, off the coast of Malaysia, then called Malaya. The story is told inretrospect when Philip is an old man, and his memories of his beloved martial arts teacher Hayato Endo have been revived by the arrival of an equally elderly lady who also once loved Endo-san, though chastely. Because he is half Chinese and his half-siblings are fully British, the Philip we encounter as a boy is something of a loner. Then, when he's 16, just before the start of the war, he meets a Japanese man on the beach who asks to borrow his boat. Philip not only loans the boat but becomes Endo-san's pupil, though the relationship is disapproved of by Philip's family and community; even before the war the Japanese aren't trusted in Malaya. The effect pupil and teacher have on each other, and their societies, is incalculable, both catastrophic and redemptive by turns. Indeed, sometimes catastrophe and redemption are so intertwined that they can't be untangled. Eng's writing is beautiful and sensuous, whether he describes a temple full of slithering snakes, the smells of cooking food or the light of hundreds of fireflies caught in mosquito netting. Interestingly, The Gift of Rain also shares many of the qualities of a boy's adventure story. The most intense relationships are between men, there's no sex and no swearing and there's even a scene involving the threat of torture and a ticking time bomb that could have been plucked out of "24." But these are in no way flaws. The Gift of Rain is a splendidly written tale about the consequences of war and friendship.
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'Rain' bestows lessons during times of love, war
By Elysa Gardner GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
All is fair in love and war. Sure, it's a cliche, but it's constantly acquiring new resonance.
A noteworthy case in point is Tan Twan Eng's "The Gift of Rain." A good chunk of this glorious novel, a nominee for last year's Booker Prize, takes place during World War II. But what it reveals about the human capacity for acceptance and grace, even under the most trying conditions, transcends time and circumstance.
The focal relationship in "Rain" is as deep, sensual and uncompromising as any romantic or military union, though it doesn't really qualify as either. It is 1939 and Philip Hutton, the only child of a British trader and his late Chinese wife, is 16 and living in Penang when he meets a mysterious Japanese diplomat.
Hayato Endo, or Endo-san, as Philip calls him, soon forms an intense bond with the teenager. He teaches Philip his language and imparts key aspects of his cultural and spiritual traditions, including the complex, rigorous art of aikido. But as the Japanese invade Malaya, and Endo-san's identity is clarified, Philip learns the price of this education -- not only for himself, but for his dad, stepsiblings and their community -- might be much higher than he anticipated.
Many years later, Philip is visited by a woman who, at 75, is a few years his senior. She leads him to ponder the challenges and contradictions embedded in his friendship with Endo-san and in the war. Michiko Murakami also knew Endo-san well, although in a very different manner.
Eng artfully juggles Philip's vivid recollections of his youth with chapters set in the present, and these three central characters provide rich lessons about the futility and inevitability of violence and the necessity of love and sacrifice in their many forms.
"Rain" is a gift indeed, as robustly absorbing as it is achingly poignant.
