The House of Doors

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Tan Twan Eng provides vivid descriptions of the book’s geographical settings, like Malaysia. Have you ever been to any of the places described in the novel? If so, were the descriptions accurate to your memory of these places (keeping in mind that this is historical fiction)? If not, were the descriptions vivid enough for you to picture these places?

2. Were you satisfied with the depictions of the characters and their growth—or lack thereof? Which character did you relate to the most, and why? The least?

3. Willie is a man who is caught between opposites—e.g., he simultaneously desires authorial publicity and privacy. Have you ever felt caught between opposite impulses? How did you navigate these situations? What do you think about the way Willie navigates (or fails to navigate) his own conflicted feelings?

4. The novel plays with the relationship between telling stories and relating histories. What do you think is the relationship between the two?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. What are the ethics of writing a novel about real people, including depicting aspects of their lives they wanted or needed to keep secret during their lifetimes (e.g., Maugham’s identity as a gay man)? Maugham once said that his stories include fictionalized versions of real people he met on his travels: Does this factor into or alter your answer? How does this topic inform the plot of the novel itself?

2. The novel’s fictionalized portrayal of Gerald shows him as flighty, impulsive, financially exploitative, and borderline sexist toward Willie’s wife, Syrie. Without any verifiable historical sources confirming these attributes, what are the repercussions of portraying Gerald this way? Does the novel accidentally perpetuate antigay stereotypes, or does it successfully subvert and sidestep them?

3. How does this novel navigate historical racial politics and global events? Does their filtering through the eyes of Lesley, a white woman living in colonized countries, come with any limitations? Do some research into historical moments like the advent of Apartheid in South Africa—does your research reveal anything that Lesley’s perspective and privilege make her unaware of?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. How does the looping, nonlinear timeline of this novel affect your reading experience? How does it affect the narrative, and how would the narrative change if it were linear? How does the structure support the work’s themes?

2. Though Lesley is the protagonist, she exhibits biases common to the white communities of her day. What attributes make Lesley a complicated figure, when read by a contemporary audience? How do these attributes combine in her character arc—is she a round character, a flat character, a static character, etc.?

3. What is the symbolic significance of doors in the House of Doors? What is the symbolic significance of the doors that feature elsewhere in the novel? What metaphorical “doors” does the novel depict, and how does this relate to doors’ overall symbolism?

4. How are narrative elements—like plot developments and characterizations—affected by the novel’s temporal and geographical settings?