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Mark Tjhung talks to Janice Y K Lee about her new tale of colonial romance.

For Janice Lee, The Piano Teacher symbolises the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition. As the afternoon sun flickers into the courtyard at The Repulse Bay, she gleams as she prepares to speak: “Since the fifth grade, I could imagine nothing better [than writing a book].” But it’s been a long road for the former Elle and Mirabella magazine writer, having first put pen to paper in 2002 with barely an idea in mind. A mere five years later, her 336-page book was complete.

Born in Hong Kong of Korean parents, the mother of four began her schooling in Hong Kong before moving to the US for secondary and tertiary education, completing a degree in English and American Literature and Language at prestigious Harvard University. She later returned to Hong Kong, with no less than a husband and two kids in tow, settling in the leafy surrounds of Repulse Bay.

Her debut novel, The Piano Teacher, is set in Hong Kong over two periods – the 1940s, both before and during the Japanese occupation, and the early 1950s – telling the story of Claire Pendleton, a newlywed from England, and her arrival into post-war Hong Kong ‘society’, as she becomes the piano teacher for the daughter of the wealthy and influential Chen family. She soon begins an affair with Will Truesdale, the driver for the Chen’s, and slowly delves deeper into a world still bearing the ugly scars of war, including his past with a hauntingly beautiful Eurasian woman named Trudy Liang.

Lee’s debut novel is a real story-driven page turner full of twists and intrigue. However, as she recalls, the book wasn’t always that way. In fact, it wasn’t even close. “This book is quite plot driven, but in the beginning I had zero plot. I had these two characters, and then I put them together and thought – what happens now?” Indeed, the writer admits that the story wasn’t always planned with precision. “It didn’t come from me doing an outline… It was quite mysterious even to me at the beginning. I thought, ‘these people are talking to each other and this is what they’re saying’. And then I would hear things in my daily life and I would think ‘Oh – that’s something that I think Will would say to Trudy’. That’s how it started.”

But just as it did to Hongkongers in December 1941, the introduction of the war into Lee’s book changed her world, providing critical mass to its more dramatic aspects. Even though the war was not part of Lee’s initial concept, her portrayal of the horrors of wartime Hong Kong, little known both locally and internationally, serves as an eye-opener for the reader. Her description is terrifying and, at times, extremely moving, taking the reader on a visual journey into Hong Kong’s descent into mayhem during the war and, particularly, the conditions at Stanley Prison, where foreign-enemy nationals were interned until August 1945, a period known as the ‘three years and eight months’.

The setting of the war and the constant cloud that it casts over the entire book drives the suspense in the story as well as providing a poignant setting for Lee’s first idea – the conversation – to take place. But, even after the introduction of the war, by no means did the book come easily to the self-professed ‘slow writer’. “It took a long, long, long time. When you’re writing a novel, and I’m a mother… sometimes it seems utterly foolish. [But] I really wanted to write about these people.”

She readily confesses that it required much experimentation before she settled on her final, successful manuscript. For Lee, it was all about getting the feel right, trialling with various aspects and devices. Indeed, one of the features of the book is in its structure: the reader is constantly slung between the two periods of the book with increasingly short chapters, always ominously suggesting that, somewhere along the line, the two worlds will eventually collide. “I spent a lot of time working on that. In the beginning, when I was trying to get it right, I had it in first person, second person, third person, I had it alternating, I had it all one ‘40s and then all ‘50s. Then I figured out that I wanted them to alternate, so you could be introduced to both of the periods.”

Similarly, Lee played around with her approach to tense until she found precisely what she was after. “The ‘40s [part], which is further away, is in the present tense… I wanted it to seem more immediate and dreamlike, which I think the present tense accomplishes. [However,] the ‘50s part is in past tense, which I experimented a lot with, and I wanted that to feel more as if the story was unfolding, which is more traditional.”

But despite all the experimentation, perhaps most credit for shaping the book should go to Lee’s characters. After half a decade, the central characters of Claire, Will and Trudy were very much living to her. In amongst the shelling and torture of the war, and the suspenseful sub-plots, for Lee, the central heart of the book remained with this trio. “It was all about the characters and the people. What they did led me to what happened.”

Without spoiling the plot, Lee only realised what would happen to certain characters as she wrote, as if their actions were dictating their own direction and, ultimately, their fate. “The characters became very real to me, and what they did seemed very natural… as I wrote, it became very clear.”

What emerged was a compelling story, a thematic cocktail, touching on the race and class systems present in the then-British colony, the realities of war, the choices that people make in extreme situations, and love. But don’t expect the book to be blissfully romantic. “I wanted something more real and honest, because I think a lot of life is like that… [The book is] not romantic – it’s not a love story.”

Despite this, she cites ‘love’ as a key reason why The Piano Teacher has sold so well to publishers around the world, with plans already underway for it to be translated into 21 languages. “I think with the themes of war and love, there’s been a lot of interest,” muses Lee. Will, Clare and Trudy are probably surprised by all the attention their story has received.

The Piano Teacher is published by Viking,  read the review.