The Piano Teacher (Lee novel)


The Piano Teacher is a 2009 novel by Janice Y. K. Lee about a love story set in Hong Kong in the 1940s and 1950s. It is about a married woman who is hired by a rich family and ends up having an affair with the family driver, only to discover his tragic past with a former lover. The book became a global bestseller.
The character of Trudy was loosely based on Emily Hahn.

Plot

The novel is set in Hong Kong in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was still a British territory. Upon his arrival in Hong Kong, Will Truesdale meets Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite of Portuguese and Chinese descent. She and Will fall deeply in love, but are inevitably separated by World War II and the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Will is sent to an internment camp while Trudy becomes both the tutor and unwilling mistress of the cruel Japanese General Otsubo, who rules Hong Kong.
Ten years later Claire Pendelton, twenty-eight and newly married, moves from England to Hong Kong with her husband Martin. She is hired by the Chens, a wealthy Chinese family, to give piano lessons to their ten-year-old daughter Locket. Claire begins an affair with Will, a 43-year-old Englishman who is working as the Chens' driver, unaware of his tragic past or his former lover. The novel moves fluidly between the two love affairs that happen 10 years apart, tying together the social fabric that interweaves the lives of so many, and ultimately culminates in the revelations of war-time secrets and betrayals.

Characters