The Piano Teacher

Starred review from September 8, 2008
Former Elle
editor Lee delivers a standout debut dealing with the rigors of love and survival during a time of war, and the consequences of choices made under duress. Claire Pendleton, newly married and arrived in Hong Kong in 1952, finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of Melody and Victor Chen, a wealthy Chinese couple. While the girl is less than interested in music, the Chens' flinty British expat driver, Will Truesdale, is certainly interested in Claire, and vice versa. Their fast-blossoming affair is juxtaposed against a plot line beginning in 1941 when Will gets swept up by the beautiful and tempestuous Trudy Liang, and then follows through his life during the Japanese occupation. As Claire and Will's affair becomes common knowledge, so do the specifics of Will's murky past, Trudy's motivations and Victor's role in past events. The rippling of past actions through to the present lends the narrative layers of intrigue and more than a few unexpected twists. Lee covers a little-known time in Chinese history without melodrama, and deconstructs without judgment the choices people make in order to live one more day under torturous circumstances.

March 2, 2009
Orlagh Cassidy narrates this tale of Hong Kong’s ultra-wealthy Chinese and the British and American expats who share their high life until Japanese occupation in the early 1940s. After the war Claire, the American naïf who joins society through her role as a piano teacher, leaves her husband, is abandoned by her lover and settles into a quiet suburb far from the social whirl. Cassidy handles various accents expertly and has a keen sense of irony, but she is unsuited for more emotionally charged settings—the love scenes hardly seem romantic, and the horror, intrigue and collusion of the occupation period should have been recounted with more drama and less aloofness. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 8).

Orlagh Cassidy's narration starts languorously, allowing listeners to slip into the exotic, sensual world that Claire Pendleton finds when she moves to Hong Kong in 1952. Newly married and bored, Claire teaches piano to the daughter of the wealthy Chens and starts an affair with their European chauffeur, Will Truesdale. Cassidy steps up the passion as she dramatizes flashbacks to 1942 Hong Kong and the world of Truesdale. These chapters take center stage as Cassidy portrays the intriguing Eurasian Trudy Liang, who enchants and mystifies both Truesdale and audio listeners. Cassidy shifts her tone again as this luminous world changes to one of torment under the Japanese occupation. As the tension builds and the characters' stories come together, Cassidy shifts her initial coolness into a heated performance. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

May 15, 2009
Moving back and forth in time between the Japanese invasion of World War II and its aftermath ten years later, this debut novel by Lee, whose familiarity with her Hong Kong homeland is apparent in her vivid descriptions of the setting, is a sparsely written study of how people react under extraordinary circumstances. Actress/narrator Orlagh Cassidy's ("Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict") fluid and charming performance helps listeners better engage with the tale's generally unsympathetic characters. Of interest to larger public libraries. [Audio clip available through www.blackstoneaudio.com; the Viking hc received a starred review, "LJ" 10/1/08.Ed.]Denise A. Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

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