The Gift of Rain

by Tan Twan Eng

Set in Penang, 1939, this book presents a story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love.

The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng's debut novel casts a powerful spell. Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Asia, Book Club, War, Historical, Literary Fiction

447 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law at the University of London and later worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reputable law firms; in 2016, he was an International Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Tan's first novel, The Gift of Rain (2007), was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian. The Garden of Evening Mists (2011), his second novel, won the Man Asian Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right from the start, I knew I picked the right book to read. After spending about an hour going through books I own...I settled in with "The Gift of Rain".
There is nothing better than when the entire first chapter has you fully engaged, captivated, emotionally invested with the characters -- and loving the dialogue.
Our trust in the author has been established!

Phillip Hutton was born into a wealthy English family in Malaya. His mother was Chinese and his father English. Much of Malaya--(after WW II the name changes to Malaysia)...was run by wealthy English businessmen.
At the 'very' start, Philip says: "I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me. This was back in a time when I did not believe in fortunetellers, when the world was not yet filled with wonder and mystery".

Don't you just want to know "what the gift of rain is"? --- I did!
Phillip says: "The day I met Michiko Murakami, too, a tender rain had dampened the world. It had been following for the past week and I knew more would come with the monsoon. Already the usual roads in Penang had begun to flood the sea turning to a sullen gray.

.....It rains and rains throughout this novel......so I looked up what rain stands for symbolically. [renewal, fertility, and change]. Hm?/!....YES, this fits!!!

Michiko Murakami received a letter from Endo-san--( the Japanese sensei) --OVER 50 YEARS AGO....in the spring of 1945......FOUR YEARS AFTER THE JAPANESE INVADED MALAYA. Michiko brings a letter of memories to share.
Endo-san had written about his life in Malaya- and had written about Phillip Hutton. Ending-san was Phillips mentor and friend when Philip was a teenager. He taught him martial arts, philosophy, discipline, and compassion. Being of mixed racial heritage- Philip didn't feel he belonged anywhere.
Phillip's initial infatuation with Endo-san grew deeper and more permanent. The respect for each other went in both directions, yet there was a wide gap in cultural differences.

There comes a time when Philip is split in two-- between his loyalty to his family-- to protect them -- and to Endo-san. The decisions he made as a teen weigh heavy on him for the rest of his life. There was much suffering by many -cruelty of the Japanese soldiers towards the Malaysians.

This book is absolutely beautiful. It's one of the best 'looking back' stories ( I tend to have a soft heart for 'looking back' stories anyway, when done well) --I've read. Philip Hutton is the narrator- an older gentleman. He is very objective -clear thinking about his past. He's was aware of the consequences..... and he had some very difficult decisions to make. My own belly was in knots a few times - This story gets suspenseful - and worrisome- you just don't know if the right choices are being made.

There is so much wisdom -power and beauty in this novel. I really have Connie to thank. Thank You, Connie!!
I was enchanted by her review 'ways-back' and had not forgotten it.

Wonderful writing --gorgeous descriptions and visuals of scenery. There are a few scenes of violence.

Heartbreaking history of WWII Penang....with exquisite storytelling.

[Eddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I come across books such as this one, I'm blown away at the amount of people I know who choose not to read. I'm also blown away that a book like this doesn't get as much attention as the Twilight Saga. Twilight makes me want to throw-up on the mere thought of the book being the phenomenon that it is. Books like The Gift of Rain put me in awe, and I think, even though atheist, I hope if there is a heaven, it's as good as this writing. I'm shocked that this was the author's first novel. This was an absolute work of art. An epic, in my opinion. The writing, the incredibly deep story, the characters and the development of the characters were astonishing. I hope this guy is living well off of this book—because he deserves it. A wonderful, wonderful book.

Yes, this book is heavy, and not for people who like soft, cuddly stories. Just a forewarning if you choose to read it in the future.

[Samadrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people's lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity, and renewal. It washes away our pain and prepares us for another day, and even another life. Now that I am old I find that the rains follow me and give me comfort, like the spirits of all the people I have ever known and loved."

Twan Eng Tan may not be a great prose stylist or even come close to being one. He may falter when it comes to subtlety and fail at inserting appropriate metaphors into his rather direct tone of narration. But he surely succeeds in recounting a moving tale of human triumph with great clarity. Like a wise old man with sinewy forearms sitting in the midst of a group of young, moon-eyed listeners, he narrated a story of times gone by and all I did was lend him an eager ear.
I listened to his voice with rapt attention, I learnt, I understood, I shed tears.

I was transported back in time where I stood somewhere along the sidelines as a helpless spectator witnessing the mute misery of a picturesque but war-ravaged land. So much so I'm still recovering from the fierce onslaught of all the images of terrible beauty that Eng drew before my mind's eye in rapid succession.
I'm going to recall from time to time, the startling greenery of the verdant rain forests in and around Penang, the hustle and bustle of the marketplaces in Istana, the gray-white limestone cliffs of Ipoh, the rich aroma of a pot of steaming coconut rice, the calming effect of zazen and the tale of Philip Hutton's uncommon bravery in the face of madness brought forth by an all-engulfing war. And I'm going to try to make sense of the paradoxical yet deeply human bond between Philip Hutton, a representative of a vanquished and besieged Malaysia and Hayato Endo, a representative of the conqueror Japan.

When the world sinks into chaos of the most fatal kind and all finer human impulses are trampled on over and over again until nothing remains but only the irrational urge to draw blood, burn and annihilate, a handful of people refuse to stray from the path of sanity and compassion at the cost of complete personal ruin.
Philip Hutton, our narrator, was one such person. Born of a British father and a Chinese mother, he was forever an outcast in any world he wished to belong to, all because he was guilty of having a mixed parentage. Perhaps that is why, he imbibed all the great virtues of his British and Chinese heritage and under the tutelage of a Japanese spy of dubious loyalties, familiarized himself with the disciplines of aikijutsu , aikido and other Japanese ways of living, which became crucial to the survival of many later on.

During the trying times of the Japanese Occupation, at the risk of perpetual disgrace, he crossed over to the side of the enemy only to save what was most precious to him. Philip Hutton became notorious for aiding the Japanese in running the affairs of Malay and a collaborator in all the atrocities carried out against the natives, but what didn't become common knowledge was how he saved many, many innocent lives under the helpful guise of betraying the land of his birth.

Even though I am sorely tempted to label The Gift of Rain as a testimony to the greater human predicament during turbulent times, that goes beyond the petty divides of ethnicity, skin color and culture, I will not succumb to that lure. Philip Hutton maybe perceived as a cliched symbol of a stabilizing influence on all conflicting elements of life or he may even be just a reminder of that elusive voice of reason which we often proceed to stifle with brutal force at a time we need it the most. But I will not seek to trivialize his fictitious life in this cold analytical manner.

Instead, I choose to be a random listener who came across the extraordinary story of his courage and withhold judgement. I choose to dignify his existence by not questioning his deeds, his associations, his choices or his existential dilemmas. I choose to empathize with Malay and China, both of which were tormented and ripped apart by another nation nurturing a blind Imperialist zest. But then I also choose to empathize with the aggressor Japan, which didn't escape suffering inflicted by the War either.

I choose not to vilify Philip for fraternizing with the foe and I choose not to indict Endo san for his treachery.
And by doing neither, I choose to side with humanity.
Because as much as it will be easier to pigeonhole wartime human barbarity into convenient labels like repercussions of ruthless nationalist ambitions and pass the buck on responsibility, the lasting truth of the matter is the all-encompassing nature of our collective ordeals through time and space.
In the end, it doesn't matter who or what caused our suffering. It matters that we suffered.

Review originally posted on:- August 12th, 2013

[Debbie W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why I chose to listen to this audiobook:
1. I was entranced by author Tan Twan Eng's storytelling in The Garden of Evening Mists, so I added this debut novel to my WTR list;
2. it's available as a free loan via Hoopla (17 hours); and,
3. April 2024 is my self-declared "Aqueous Titles" Month!

Praises:
1. this story successfully takes me back in time to Penang Island of Malay before, during, and after the Japanese Occupation of WWII. The richness of its history and culture is exquisitely portrayed;
2. I liked how the historical portion was relayed as memories told to an elderly Japanese woman by Phillip Hutton, the MC now in his twilight years who, as a citizen of mixed British and Chinese descent, is a native of Penang; and,
3. narrators Gordon Griffin and Luke Thompson were easy on the ears.

Niggles:
1. just what was up with Phillip Hutton and his sensei, Endo-san? Why depict Phillip as an impressionable 16-year-old, living alone in his family's home for 6 months, meet up with this handsome older man, who seems to become more than his respected teacher? He doesn't appear to have any close connections to the few female characters portrayed. Who is he trying to kid when he collaborates with the Japanese in order "to protect his family"? Tan's subtle "tender" scenes show the reader where Phillip's true loyalties lie. If these MCs were supposed to be sympathetic to the reader, I didn't buy it; and,
2. this book is overly long! From his vivid descriptiveness about everything, to the stories within the story, I found my attention wandering at times.

Overall Thoughts:
I had difficulty writing this review. For a debut, it's quite an eloquently-written story about love, loyalties, betrayals, regrets, pain, and renewal. On the other hand, the characterization could have been more fleshed out, and a good portion of this story could have been edited.
Overall, a "good read", but in my opinion, not at the outstanding level as The Garden of Evening Mists.

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I realized that this book was set in South East Asia I had to plunge into it. SE Asia is one of my favorite areas in the world. Whenever it is mentioned, memories from my visits and from having lived there are immediately summoned back in my mind.

Memories of books, which I hold responsible for first igniting my imagination and fascination with the place, inevitably also spring back. The most memorable are Lord Jim and Somerset Maugham’s Casuarina Tree and Other Stories but perhaps the latter holds more evocative power.





When I first read it prior to my first visit I was fascinated by Maugham’s description of the silhouette of the casuarina tree with its leaves forming a delicate lace against the sun.





Before Google times I had to wait until I was there, and could find the actual tree, to be able to appreciate Maugham’s image. Looking around I finally found my first Casuarina tree next to the entrance to the Sarawak Museum. I took a picture and I keep it as a book marker in my copy of the book.

This introduction is to make you aware of the anticipation with which I began to read this work. And now, with all this agitated expectation, what was my opinion of The Gift of Rain?

Well, let’s see.

The book is very ambitious in its complex setting, scope and lush writing. As a first book by the young writer Tan Twan Eng, it has been well received. It made it into the long list for the Booker Prize in 2007. It also set its author in the right path, since his second and latest novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, was short listed for this same prize this year.

The novel presents the tragic demise of a British family, which had established itself in the Penang island in the colony of Malaysia, and where it created an economic emporium. In a flash back manner, the youngest son and main character. Philip Arminius Khoo–Hutton tells us, at some point in the 1990’s, the fate of his family during WWII and the Japanese occupation of the Malaysian peninsula.

Philip Hutton is the youngest of the four Hutton children, but he is the only son of a second marriage when his widowed father Noel Hutton married a Chinese Lady. As the fruit of a mixed marriage, Philip is conscious of being the product of two cultures. But as he befriends a Japanese man who becomes his very much admired teacher of Aikido or sensei, he comes to represent not two but three cultures. He stands at the Malaysian crux with its three occupants: the Chinese settlers, the British settlers, and the Japanese invaders. Curiously, Malays do not seem to figure much in the book.

Philip Hutton’s tripartite nature and inner conflicts become the forces that move the plot. The story will unfold as Philip moves from one culture or community to another, each time being both welcome and rejected, and either chooses or is led to play different roles. So, choice or fate?. In this impassionate novel Mr. Tan strives to show us the collusion of two different understandings of fate, the Asian concept of circularity and the lineal understanding held by Western thought. What a goal for a first book!

Apart from the exotic setting, the plot and the deeper musings, this book is also very pleasant to read because of its language. Mr. Tan has a very delicate and sweetly evocative pen and some of his descriptions are beautiful and lyrical and call for a slow reading.

But The Gift of Rain suffers a bit from its being a first book. Although written by an Asian author, it does taste of Western audiences. Some parts read somewhat like a Baedecker or a Vademecum of Asia. So, we get a somewhat irritating explanation of what the Nyonya community is, or a somewhat irrelevant brief digest of the occupation of the Forbidden City (with an acknowledged fictional episode included).

As he has set himself to write about a period in which he was not yet born, Mr. Tan’s youth is also felt in the way he has resorted to research. One feels it is not experience talking. So, for example, he only mentions the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but keeps silent on the almost simultaneous attack of the Clark Base in the Philippines, where the US kept its Air Force Post. The latter would have been more shocking to someone living in the area at the time, but the Pearl Harbor bombing is more prominent in our current consciousness.

May be that is the trend that current fiction is following. We readers may be becoming lazy and we expect to be led by the hand and have everything explained to us.

And last but not least, I found that not just before but also while reading this book, one could breathe the air of Western writers. Conrad is a ghost not just for me but also probably for Mr. Tan. And given what I have said about Maugham’s Casuarina, one could imagine how I jolted when I saw that this tree also figures prominently in The Gift of Rain. By planting a specimen in the Hutton gardens and making the tree the symbol of the Hutton family, Tan Twan Eng is also paying a direct homage to Somerset Maugham.

I could not object to this, but Maugham could evoke the exotic with less explicit exegesis.

This leaves me with clarifying my rating. I think that because of its neophyte tint this is a three star book, but since the components are my pet subjects and as Mr Tan is clearly a promising author, the fourth star is awarded

And to extend a bit of the Baedecker color to my review as well, here is the beautiful house of Cheong Fatt Tze, La Maison Bleu (sic) that is often mentioned as a way of guiding us to the place and times.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is epic in scope and characters, but the 500 pages whizzed by. There are atrocities, but there is plenty of beauty too, as well as excitement and espionage, all rooted in time and place (Malaya, as it then was, during the Japanese occupation of WW2), exploring the dilemmas of divided loyalties, tangling fate and free will.

“I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me. This was back in a time when I didn’t believe in fortune tellers.”
Throughout the book, foreshadowing creates suspense, rather than spoiling the plot: in this case, I immediately wondered what was going to change his mind.

Philip Hutton tells of his teen years just before and during the occupation, reflecting on what he did and didn’t do, what he should and should not have done, and how that period shaped his whole life. He’s the mixed-race only-child of his wealthy British father’s second marriage to a Chinese woman: always the solitary, motherless misfit, even among his older half-siblings. He is happier, but more torn, when he is taken on by Hayato Endo, a sensei who teaches him Aikido as well as Japanese.

“Rain, falling from a bank of low floating clouds, smearing the landscape into a Chinese brush painting. Sometimes it rained so often I wondered why the colours around me never faded, were never washed away, leaving the world in mouldy hues.

Image: Black and white photo of rain making ripples in plastic and metal containers in Penang in 2011, by Nick Chan. (Source)

It swishes between his youth and the circumstances in 1995 that prompt him to “unfold” his life for the first and last time.
“Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people’s lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity, and renewal.”

Original slant on common themes

Outwardly, it’s about what lengths one would go to protect one’s family: “His protection for my knowledge”.
But really, it’s about a vulnerable 15-year old being groomed with attention, trust, and apparent love, to gain information and to use him as a propaganda tool, with lifelong consequences for him.

Some of the language would be beautiful, if it were about a fully knowing and consensual relationship between adult equals. When an injured hand makes eating difficult:
“His eyes met mine, and he moved closer to me. He deftly picked up a sliver of salmon and held my chin with his hand as he placed it into my mouth…He was so close to me that each breath he expelled, I took, and every breath that I surrendered, he possessed.”
There’s also a hot-tempered sword fight:
“Pressing into me, sinking into me with such intensity… My sword received his force with equal hunger and I opened myself up to him as clouds open up to the sun.”
Sexual tension and suggestion, but not action.


“Forgetfulness is the one luxury I could not buy.”
Stories of troubled adolescents caught between cultures (race, religion, class, wealth) are common, as are tales of survival and difficult decisions in war time; guilt; remembering and forgetting; and prophesy, fate, and free will. Backdrops of sea and rain dilute the pain. But the way these many facets are put together, in a vividly-conjured and unfamiliar (to me) setting, is brilliantly, enticingly, and sometimes shockingly done.

“Some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, all our lives until eventually we forget why we began paying for them.”


Image: Multilingual propaganda flyer, dropped by Japanese planes over Malaya, “the funerary rites of my country”, Philip says. (Source)

Four, not five stars

Much as I enjoyed this – overall and at the sentence level - the telling is occasionally a bit clunky (long sections of one person recounting their backstory, rather than more gradual exposition) and the early parts were rather heavy on the practice and spirituality of Aikido. Descriptions of war crimes and abuse will be too much for some readers, but I think they’re well done and necessary, so haven’t marked it down for that.

Quotes - no plot spoilers

Quotes about fate

• “You and your friend have a past together, in a different time.”

• “He is myself not so long ago; he will become what I am.” [Saotome of Endo]

• “Friends part forever
Wild geese lost in the clouds.” [a key quote in the story, from a haiku by Matsuo Basho]


Quotes about remembering and forgetting

• “Memories - they are all the aged have. The young have hopes and dreams.”

• “I told him what I could remember, treading water in the shallows of my memory.”

• “The mind forgets but the heart will always remember.”


Quotes about nature

• “The sea can break one’s heart.”

• “The sea was thick beneath me, shining with phosphorescence that clung to my oars… I felt as if I were rowing on a skin of elastic light.”

• “The scent of wet grass wove through the air… creating an intricate tapestry of fragrance.”

• “Veins of lightning flared and throbbed behind the wall of clouds, turning the bruised sky pink.”

Many characters bond over collecting butterflies and watching fireflies:
• “Thoughts floated by like intoxicated butterflies.”
• “We were caught in a frenzy of fragmented light.”


Other quotes

• “Time felt like smoke in an airless room.” [life in the Forbidden City]

• “They surged across the uneven rock face… graced with a fluidity and energy that made it seem as if they had been written with a brush dipped in fire.” [ancient mystic writing, hidden in the mountains]

• “The power of the mind will always overcome the strength and weakness of the body.”

• “I already loved him, although I did not realise it, never having loved before.”



Image: Sculpture of a head, with one side smashed off, revealing the interior of a ruined building, by Catalan sculptor, Tania Font. (Source)

See also

• The author’s note at the back clarifies which events and figures are fictional and which are not. The Wikipedia page about the occupation is also worth reading, HERE. There’s another page about “Operation Jurist” when the British took control after the Japanese surrender, HERE.

• Time Out has a photo trail of places mentioned in the book, albeit contemporary pics: HERE.

• A few months before reading this, I read and loved Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists, which I reviewed HERE. It also looks back to the Japanese occupation and its long-term effects on an individual, but in a very different sort of story, with a woman as the central character.

• When Philip says he believes in free will, he mentions Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken. Michiko Murakami rebuts that by asking him who built the road. Read the poem HERE.

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

1939, Isle of Penang, Malay. Philip Hutton is a rare bird with inimitable plumage, a bird that only sings with the sound of rain. The workings of history have provided him with so many juxtaposed layers of identity that he can’t unravel his true self or where his loyalties relay. Born to a Chinese mother, the second wife of a British magnate of a large trading company, rejected by his Chinese Grandfather and an outcast among his English pure breed half-siblings, Philip considers himself a mongrel with no real sense of belonging.
When Hayato Endo-san, a quiet and sagacious Japanese Diplomat, knocks on his door on a misty morning, Philip’s life and destiny become irremediably intertwined with this mysterious individual, who brings magic and tragedy, wisdom and betrayal, purifying rain and raging floods that wash away Philip’s loneliness in exchange of a costly price, for Malay is about to be invaded by the Japanese forces amidst the tectonic geo-political shifts of World War II and Philip will have to navigate the stirred waters of honor, friendship and guilt and steer the unstable vessel of his life towards the crystalline sands of atonement.

“Your were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember – the rain also brings the flood” warns the fortune-teller in the Temple of Azure Cloud to Philip, symbolizing the Oriental belief of predetermination and the impossibility to elude the circular pattern of reincarnation to expiate past misdeeds, condemning the mere passerby made of impermanent flesh and blood to stand up against the immortality of an unalterable destiny in the spinning Wheel of Becoming.

“We always have a choice. Nothing is fixed or permanent” were the last words Philip’s mother uttered before her spirit evaporated with the fluttering butterflies and the scent of flowers blossoming in frangipani trees. Free will implies acting, actions carry consequences, consequences demand responsibility and any failure to meet this Westernized conception of morality results in corroding remorse.

What is the right path to take? How can Philip come to terms with his fractured heritage and torn beliefs? How can he survive the unimaginable savagery of war and exorcise the ghosts of a past that rots his spirit and disseminates the role truth and duty played in his double-edged game of deception and condoned slaughter?

In the same way that fate and randomness are two sides of the same coin in the mysteries of existence, beauty and horror are two-way mirrors reflecting the conflicting nature of mankind. There is eternity in the hues of turquoise that waves merge with the pristine whiteness of velvety shores in a fluid motion and irreconcilable sadness in the corpse of a broken woman whose eyelids flicker with life ebbing away from her and whose spirit plummets down into the bloody mud with thwarted hope after witnessing the arbitrary murder of her innocent husband.
Whatever Philip decides, he will never make the correct choices and that is both his curse and his blessing, for he straddles two worlds and possesses the gift to bring all of life’s diverging elements into a cohesive whole, regardless of nationalities, race and historical circumstance.

The sword of doom falls down mercilessly upon those who challenge their destiny, but Philip’s blade glitters with a spirit branded with fire and rain that levitates like a feather to that spot where the ocean meets the sky and water kisses the air. A place where even death emerges as the purest expression of love, redemption and compassion.
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?”

[Praj · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been exactly twelve days since the onset of monsoons. Not a single dry pair of clothes in the house and yet my enthusiasm is as jubilant as the freshly bathed leaves welcoming the cascading raindrops. After all I had waited for an entire month, my eyes widening at every passing water-laden cloud. The grey skies had fooled me and my despair had found its mate in the curled vermillion petals of the Gulmohar tree. The descendant of the Fabaceae heritage has a bittersweet legacy with the rain. When the tree blooms to its fullest, the rain fiercely thunders to the surreal red carpet as if the flowers were waiting for their watery salvation only to be wash down in earthly oblivion, its memories lasting in the drenched emerald leaves. The cold rainwater running down my face, as I see these lithe petals tumbling into the water puddle, subtle currents sweeping them away in the nearby gutters, I tenderly bid adieu to my flowery companions that made me smile at the flamboyant display on many windy afternoons. In a couple days all that will remain is a tree filled with dainty green leaves that will accompany me till winter and then once again make me anticipate its summer bloom. Resembling the deafening downpour hoping to catch the last dust particle, muddled thoughts gushed into my mind as I read the prophecy of Philip Hutton being born with the ‘gift of rain’. Gazing at the grey cloud hovering over the Gulmohar like a samurai equipped to slash the graceful flowers with every scrupulous stroke of clammy precipitation; I had an inkling of seeing Philip walk the treacherous path to find the fulfillment of his prophecy, the nirvana where love and memory soar like fireflies twinkling in the darkest night.

Who can look back and truly say all his memories are happy ones? To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. Do you not agree?

The synchronized moves of a bokken balancing the symphony of the black and white garb, the dangers lurking on the edge of a katana , imparted the teachings of Zen to a bemused adolescent dangling between the aloofness of two alien worlds. The principles of aikijutsu, carving footprints of love and harmony in the translucent grains of sand disciplined the body and mind in the cyclic divinity of ‘Stillness in Movement; Movement in Stillness’.Along with its patrons , the art of harmonizing being victimized by the war of spirituality and patriotism. The evil appendages of a burgeoning war had crawled into the mysticism of the double-edge sword rebelling the harmonious notions of aikijutsu , the swordplay crossing the destined lines of comradeship and hostility ; of loyalty and betrayal. The blissful memories of a fertile pre-war Penang gradually worn out like the eroded river-bed; the fading hopes and dreams interwoven with idealistic games of human courage and savagery and love being the stimulating harbinger of a harrowing universe. The tears of a forgotten Chinese Emperor whispered through the historical vestiges, its memories tightly locked within the opulence of a jade pin. The Japanese invasion of Malaya had shattered the conviction of a vibrant enriching nation disintegrating its body with blood-shed and excruciating crimes while ravaging it mind with an eternal burden of tortuous memories. The war had long gone, the residual memories only to be found within a remaining few of its survivors, yet the whispers of a courageous nation along with his valiant people become louder with every emotional wave that brings the buried treacherous past ashore sketching the once forgotten footprints of an enduring love for family, country and the breathing humanity.

Tan Twan Eng’s minimalism in the written prose is passage through which travels the surrealism of a gleaming realistic imagery. The sounds of nostalgia running through the dense forests of Malaya, the touch of tangled life prevailing in turbulent times and the whiff of traditions amalgamating into epigraphs of mystical destinies made it difficult from resisting oneself to be consumed by the astonishing images illustrated in this allegorical maze of a thriller. There were times when I was left with nothing but intervals of vacant emotions gazing at the placid tree tapping my balcony. Storytelling, the steady stream of long-lost words liberates the burden of anguished memories buried deep within the core of survival. Philip found momentary emancipation from his tormenting memories through Michiko’s reminiscences of love and compassion. And, I found the release of my overpowering lunacy by scripting this appraisal; only to revive those sentiments the moment I shall open this book once again.


Next to a parent a teacher is the most powerful person in one’s life.....

Tan Twan Eng interlaces a commendable pattern of discovering poignant connections between strangers in the course of dream-like fated commonalities that cultivate into an everlasting union of humanity and approbation. The encounter of Philip Khoo-Hutton with the mystifying Japanese diplomat – Hayato Endo seemed to be a sort of paranormal path that both of these individuals were destined to walk on. The journey of Endo-san from being an aloof tenant on the island to becoming a mentor and later a figure of uncertainties, encapsulated Philip’s journey of self-acceptance and self-awareness in the desolated worlds of the Khoos and the Huttons and later on in the communal mêlée to recover his mislaid sense of belonging. The teacher-student relationship moved further from the peripheral enlightenment of the aikijutsu , aikido and the three pillars of Japanese language, inching towards the grid of a mortal conflict where the highest level of jujitsu would burn within the societal taboos and segregation of Japanese incursions and the dominant racial dogmas, its ashes colouring the memories within the Nagamitsu sword. The love of a parent disciplines the tender heart and the love of a teacher disciplines the very human existence – the mind. The lessons learned through the scholarly association of a student and a sensei carried the credibility of refined wisdom through the philosophical threads knotting the bonds between Tanaka-san and Kon; Noel Hutton and Philip; Grandfather Khoo and Philip and Michiko in later years. Every memorable experience irrespective to it sentimental scale carried the obligations of being a teacher to the anonymous sphere of naivety. The land of Penang had become the most prudent educator of its time bestowing the proficient tutorial of absolute fidelity.

That love will find a way, no matter the obstacles. It tells us that love can transcend time and live on, long after you and I are gone.

When the last martyr find its deserving grave , when the last puddle of blood is dried to its blackened tomb , the remnants of a war are vanished from the land , its memories now deeply buried in forlorn hearts that feebly hold onto the sufferings shackled by time. The concepts of destiny and sovereignty reconciling within the ironies of life, its beauty skewered on the labyrinths of apologies and self-justification and in through the numerous consolation of the dead, there stands aloof on the bridge of burdensome memories the inviolability of love. It was love that had brought Michiko to Philip’s door, it was the reverence of love that had compelled Philip to orate the harrowing saga after fifty long years exhuming it from the cavernous furrows of his heart and when a boat sailed silently in the tender waters it brightened the gloomy sand crystallizing the traces of dutiful love that defined Endo-san’s fated existence. The arid earth nestled in the muggy drizzle animates through the wet soil, the alluring fragrance lingering its admiration for the glistening raindrops. The falling rain brings life into the inert earth only to conceal it several minutes later in a murky watery grave. Yet, the admiration for the ruthless rain prevails in the turbulent skies. Even though the rain brings melancholy and pain submerging the living in its vehemence, it cleans the filth, renews life and brings hope to infertile souls. The irony of rain interweaves into the surreal enchantment of life, where the sadness of the lifeless vermillion Gulmohar flowers floating in a muddy puddle fades in the blossoming happiness as tadpoles emerge through the flowery bed taking their first leaps. And, that is the crucial gift of rain. The shimmering blade of the Nagamitsu sword mirrors the conflict of love, family and country, the memory of warm blood and valiant allegiance within its steely interiors brings a plethora of perplexed emotions running through the lush harmony of Penang questioning the savagery of humankind and the conflict of mortal love. For in the end, when intoxicating butterflies soar from the frosty sepulchres, the genesis of abhorrence and treason become insignificant and all that matters is the credence of sufferings. The inexplicable ambiguity of life juxtaposing incongruity and paranormal peculiarities beautifying the existing anguish of paradoxical truth ascends in the symptomatic prose of human valour and enduring devotion. And that is the gift of Tan Twan Eng’s words.

[Margitte · Rating 5 out of 5]

BLURB
"Set in Penang, 1939, this book presents a story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love."

"The Gift of Rain spans decades as it takes readers from the final days of the Chinese emperors to the dying era of the British Empire, and through the mystical temples, bustling cities,and forbidding rain forests of Malaya." In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton - the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang's great trading families - feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who rents a nearby island from his father. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. As World War II rages in Europe, the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, and Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei - to whom he owes absolute loyalty - is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and he is forced into collaborating with the Japanese to safeguard his family. He becomes the ultimate outsider, trusted by none and hated by many. Tormented by his part in the events, Philip risks everything by working in secret to save as many people as he can from the brutality he has helped bring upon them.

MY EXPERIENCE OF THE BOOK

Mr. Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton wasn't known as Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton when Michiko Murakami knocked on his door. Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton is a name that young Philip Hutton could never use before. It never connected his emotions to his place in society. He never felt completely accepted in either his maternal Chinese community, nor his paternal British family. He was born, and lived, between two worlds in Penang, a multicultural Malaysian island off the Malay Peninsula in the Malacca Strait. He was considered a half-breed that had no place anywhere. He never felt at home in the family he was born to. He found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island which belonged to his father.

Michiko Murakami came into his life when both of them were in their early seventees, she a little older than him. Destiny predicted the moment, when he offered her tea, with the fragrance of the Lonely Tree. A rare tea which originated from her home village in Japan. That is, where it was cultivated before WWII. The plantations were destroyed, with only small sections still in production. A rare tea to have indeed. " It tasted bitter and melancholic, which puzzled me, for how could a beverage capture the essence of emotion?"
As it turned out, it would not be the only connection these two strangers shared. There was a tale they had to share, she as listener, and he as the narrator.

" I had waited so long for all of it to come out: the guilt, the regrets, the darkness that had filled my days for such an eternity.

"Some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, all our lives until eventually we forget why we began paying in the first place.

It was as though his satori was waiting all these years for this meeting with Michiko to happen. Yes, it was destiny. She had come to find Endu-san's final resting place and to deliver a package. She needed Philip's memories to conclude her own life story.

He stopped trusting people many years ago. But it was Michiko who had to hear his story and he opened up in an instinctive knowledge that it was suppose to happen.

As an old man he had to go back, more than fifty years ago when he, as a seventeen-year-old boy, met the Japanese man, Hayato Endo, who would teach Philip to touch heaven. Endu-san became his most important mentor, and the person who would change the rest of his life.

"You were growing up as a child of mixed parentage in this place. But that is your strength. Accept the fact that you are different, that you are of two worlds. And I wish you to remember this when you feel you cannot go on: you are used to the duality of life. You have the ability to bring all of life’s disparate elements into a cohesive whole. So use it.”

The discipline and skills Endo-san would teach him through aikido would prepare him for the journey through the Japanese occupation of Penang, and the role Philip would play in it.

“I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me. "

She said:" Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember—the rain also brings the flood.”

Almost at the end of his life, sharing his memories, can he finally come to terms with his guilt, betrayal, destroyed loyalties, and the real meaning of love and forgiveness.

"Memories—they are all the aged have. The young have hopes and dreams, while the old hold the remains of them in their hands and wonder what has happened to their lives."

Michiko's arrival brought back the meaning of his destiny though different lifetimes. Where his mind faltered, his heart took over to finally make sense of everything that has happened. After all, his body was old, and could not save him anymore from the life and memories he had to face on his own, for more than fifty years.

"The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?”

Michiko came to hear the tale about his family, his friends, his county, his loyalty, his involvement in their fate, through the language of his heart, and not his mind. Where did duty gone so terribly wrong?

“Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others. Others who do not have your interests at heart.”

Mirakama needed his story to fulfill her own destiny. Philip needed someone to listen; to finally lead him to his satorial moment of closure.

“That is what growing old consists of, mostly. One starts giving away items and belongings until only the memories are left. In the end, what else do we really require?”

For Philip Hutton to become Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton, he had to travel over continents of time and across a landscape of horrific memories to reach the moment in his life when his name finally made sense to him.

A brilliant, informative, extensive reading experience. It is not a piece of history that I would ever want to experience in my life again. Like Philip Hutton and Michiko Murakami, once is enough. To understand his role and destiny, Philip Hutton had to take the reader through hundreds of years of history. It often felt like living through all those years, and not just reading it.

It was a brutally honest experience.

Truth is, it was such an emotional journey to finish this book. At times I really wanted to run away and hide, but I felt I would betray the characters if I did.I just had to be there for them until the very end.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

WWII has been written about as much as any historical event but usually such novels concentrate on the impact on Europe and the horrors and atrocities there.The Gift of Rain begins in Penang in 1939. The protagonist is Philip Hutton, a half-Chinese half-English boy living an idyllic life of privilege, yet feeling alienated from both cultures. From these pre-war years through the Japanese invasion of the Malay Peninsula and the subsequent years,a the story is told in flashbacks by the now elderly Philip. Also told are the years of haunting memories and regrets.

As a young boy Philip becomes an aikijutsu student taught by the well-respected Japanese instructor, Endo-San. Their relationship develops into one of deep love, respect, loyalty, deceit, and betrayal. When the invasion occurs Philip is required to make life altering choices, often ones that have no easy resolution, choices that he must live with for the rest of his life. Like rain in the prophesy he was given, his life and the actions he takes can be a blessing or a curse.

This first novel by Tan Twan Eng was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and his second book The Garden of Evening Mists was shortlisted. The beauty of his writing is evident in both. Both books dropped me in a world that was alluring and frightening. It has been a long time since I delayed finishing a book, delayed the return to the current reality. I wanted to remain immersed in The Gift of Rain, know more about the Japanese and Chinese cultures, ponder over the lovely similes and metaphors (albeit a few too many). The author’s newest book, House of Doors will be published next March. I am sure it will be a favorite of mine in 2023.

"I realized then that there was an emotion worse even than the sharpest fear, it was the dull feeling of hopelessness, the inability to do anything."

"Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it."

"That is what growing old consists of mostly. One starts giving away belongings until only the memories are left. In the end, what else do we really require?"

"We are creatures of love and memory. We can do nothing else but live out the remembered desires of our hearts. And that is the point of life itself."

[Connie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Hutton is remembering the tumultuous years in Malaysia around the time of World War II when he was a young man with divided loyalties. As a sixteen-year-old in 1939, he was the son of a prosperous English father and a deceased Chinese mother who felt like he did not fit into either community. He met Hatato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who was renting an island from Philip's father. Endo taught Philip the martial arts skills and mental discipline of aikido, as well as the Japanese language and culture. He asked Philip to show him places of interest in Malaysia, always taking detailed pictures of the areas. When the Japanese invaded Malaysia, Philip realized how Endo had used his knowledge, but he still felt a strong bond with his sensei. He remembered his Chinese grandfather's words: "'Next to a parent, a teacher is the most powerful person in one's life.' And Endo-san had been more than my parent, much more than my teacher."

Philip had to make a decision about where his loyalties laid--join the Chinese resistance, collaborate with the Japanese, or evacuate with some of the English families. The war years showed Philip in many dangerous situations. But the core of the book is really his relationships with his best friend, Kon, and with the strong men who mentor and love him--his English father, his Chinese grandfather, and Japanese Endo. In war people are caught up in a vortex beyond their control as their governments make decisions they cannot change.

As an old man, Philip is visited by an elderly woman who loved Endo years ago in Japan. They share memories of Endo and the war years. They wonder if their lives were destined by fate, or whether there is free will. Had Philip and Endo met in a previous life, and were the anguishing times in the war predetermined by fate? Had the dire predictions of the fortune teller at the snake temple come to reality?

This is a fascinating book involving many cultures. The story brings up many questions as it explores the conflicting loyalties and the difficult decisions that both Philip and Endo must make. Highly recommended.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“… one cannot escape one’s path on the continent of time …”

Love and memory. This book--dripping with culture and color and meaning and humanity--is primarily about how these two concepts are connected and how they play out in our lives and destinies.

I was enthralled with the story. Philip Hutton is a melancholy mixed-race man in his 70’s living on the Malaysian island of Penang. He is visited by Michiko, the former love of his mentor and beloved friend, the Japanese aikido master and spy Hayato Endo. Philip recounts the story of his life to Michiko, from the time he met his sensei Endo in 1939 through World War II and the Japanese invasion of his island, as events challenged his ideas about family and loyalty, discipline and faith.

The world of Penang comes alive to the reader, with beautiful descriptions of the architecture, traditions, food and habits of its diverse inhabitants.

“It was only just starting to occur to me what a strange place I had grown up in--a Malayan country ruled by the British, with strong Chinese, Indian, and Siamese influences. Within the island I could move from world to world merely by crossing a street … One could easily lose one’s identity and acquire another just by going for a stroll.”

It’s a big story, and Tan Twan Eng is a wonderful storyteller, with a flair for analogies and lyrical prose. Some parts stepped a toe into fantasy for me, with the feel of a classic romance where the forces of good and evil battle it out, and the hero takes on almost supernatural powers. But while some aspects of the hero felt romanticized, this balanced the horrific tragedies that are described in realistic detail. And the deep feelings unearthed in the tale aren’t romantic at all, but rather pared down to their truest essence.

A beautiful book, full of life, that leaves me with much food for thought.

“If one steps out of time what does one have? Why, the past of course, gradually being worn away by the years as a pebble halted on a riverbed is eroded by the passage of water.”

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tan Twen Eng has only written two novels, and having read both this one and The Garden of Evening Mists this year, he may well feel that both are very hard acts to follow. The two are to some extent companion pieces, both combine his interest in Japanese culture and martial arts with the bloody history of the war, and in both cases the protagonists have faced plenty of tragedy and impossible moral dilemmas.

Where this one is different is the setting - most of it is set on the island of Penang, and the narrator Philip Hutton is the half-Chinese youngest son of the head of one of Malaya's biggest family businesses. The other main character is Hayato Endo, whose ambivalent attitude to Japanese imperialism does not stop him working for them. The framing narrative involves Michiko, a woman who loved Endo before he left Japan and has come to visit Philip in the Penang house he has spent all of his life in before she dies. This allows Philip to relate the complex history of his relationship with Endo before and during the Japanese occupation. Other strands of the story involve Philip's Chinese grandfather whose youth was spent working in the Chinese imperial court, his three half-siblings and his best friend Kon, the protege of another Japanese martial arts master who was also close to Endo in Japan.

Philip gets drawn into working for the Japanese, partly through personal loyalty to Endo and partly because he believes it will help him protect his English family, and as one would expect there are plenty of examples of Japanese atrocities, so the book is not an easy read, but the author succeeds in capturing the complexities of Malay politics and the personal dilemmas faced by his protagonist brilliantly.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gift of Rain is a memoir, the journal of a young boy's coming of age amid the turmoil of WWII in Malaya, a lest-we-forget memorial to the victims of war crimes, a melancholy blues sung to a disappearing world : the exotic cauldron of races and cultures in colonial Penang that is being swallowed up by modern, impersonal highrise developments. I was ready to be enchanted right from the opening stanza, a quote from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby :

I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.

This is how we first come across Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton, as a solitary old man haunting the empty rooms of his palatial mansion overlooking the Straits of Mallacca, a controversial figure who is both revered and condemned for his actions during the Japanese occupation of the peninsula. A ghost from the past, in the form of an elderly Japanese widow, comes to shake him out of self-imposed silence, and to revive the memories of his doomed relationship with Endo-san, his Japanese aikido teacher (sensei).

Through extensive flashbacks we come to know Philip as the teenage posterboy of alienation, the outsider who can identify neither with his upper crust merchant family Hutton, nor with his traditional chinese grandfather Khoo. His martial arts training is used as the tool to discover his inner core of strength and self-confidence, as well as the way to go out of his protective carapace of suspicious reticence in order to learn about trust and love. Misplaced trust can be destructive, as it will be amply illustrated in the conflict between duty, family and friendship, as Philip will have to walk through the gates of Hell before he can come out stronger on the other side of war.

Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others. Others who do not have your interests at heart.

The first half of the novel, the one before the Japanese invasion, went down smoothly, with gorgeous, evocative prose ( The light spread like golden powder flung by some sweeping hand ) and subtle character interactions. The city of Penang jumps off the page in vibrant colours, sounds and smells, reminding me inevitably of Joseph Conrad and falling under under the spell of the Far East:

... and there were 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 concotion that entered us and lodged itself in the memory of our hearts.

There are some memorable scenes with fireflies in the night and butterflies in the sun, but my favorites are as always the ones by the sea, where the narrator voice is at its most appealing :

Much as I loved the house, I had a greater love for the sea - for its ever-changing moods, for the way the sun glittered on its surface, and how it mirrored every temperament of the sky. Even when I was a child the sea whispered to me, whispered and spoke to me in a language I assumed only I understood. It embraced me in its warm currents; it dissolved my rage when I was angry at the world; it chased me as I ran along the shore, curled itself around my shins, tempting me to walk farther and farther out until I became a part of its unending vastness.

Unfortunately, the five stars I was going to give the book were squandered in the second part (I noticed all of my quotes and bookmarks are from the first half of the book), where the character motivations became obscure and contrived, and the stylish presentation could no longer hide the problems with slow pacing and with writing credible action scenes. The plot is arranged around a difficult to sustain concept of predestination with equally hard to swallow dives into memories and karma debts inherited from past lives. Philip Hutton see-sawing allegiance swings start to get less credible as his portrayal of the Japanese veers towards murderous psychopats, the fleeing English colonists are repeatedly excused and the emerging communists are given the hatchett job. Two particular scenes felt out of place : one of the Hutton father and son bonding over beating the crap out of striking dock workers, and one of the guerilla needlessly torturing and killing Philip best friend and his aikido sensei .The historical details lose their lived-in aura and start to feel like they are lifted wholesale from research papers on martial arts, army customs, triads, keris knives, Chinese Imperial palace politics or interior decorations in Georgetown mansions.

Despite these critical comments, I still feel I have come out of the journey enriched and with a better view of the place and the period. Tan Twan Eng has demonstrated his ability to write beautiful prose, and I plan to read his second book sooner rather than later.

[Cherisa B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fictional memoir of an upper-crust English-Malayan senior citizen who as a young man collaborated with the Japanese in their brutal WW2 invasion and occupation of British Malaya after the Brits ignominiously bugged out. Philip, the protagonist, tries to persuade us he did what he did all for his family, while also telling us how talented, intelligent, knowledgeable, and athletic he is, as well being an incredible martial arts master from a very young age. You can believe him if you want. Along with his self-justifications.

Some good atmospherics, but a whole lot of hogwash. The unreliable, self-justifying narrator has been used to good effect before (I'm looking at you, Humbert), but here it is too forced and IMO fails, both the reader and the author.

[Frances · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.
This book started off so well but it soon became bogged down with repetitious scenes. After reading half the book I finally laid it to rest.

[Cornelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow...

[Macy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read in years. At it's core it's about doing the right thing in a very gray world -- a world where the right thing and the wrong thing are hardly distinguishable. It's about moving forward after you've made a choice.

I wept for the staggering grief in Phillip Hutton's life, and I applauded the young man who set forth to do the right thing, no matter how murky that might be.

In addition to the great story, the author did a stellar job with invoking the setting and the history so essential to the story.

I hope everyone will read this book.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
“But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island that Endo-san would one day make his home.”

Philip Hutton is telling this story. An elderly Japanese woman has told Philip she knew his friend Endo-san when they were young and has only recently received a letter from him, written to her decades earlier, and she wants to know what happened to him during the war.

“ ‘Tell me about your life. Tell me about the life you and Endo-san led. The joys you experienced and the sorrow that you encountered. I would like to know everything.’

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.”

Philip’s narrative about the past is interspersed with conversations and tours of Penang with Michiko.

As a boy, he often didn’t fit in anywhere. He was born in Penang to a prominent English businessman and his father’s young, much-loved, second wife, whose Chinese family had come to Malaya to escape the poverty and politics of China. The first wife had died, leaving Noel with three English children.

Philip’s mother also died when he was very young, so Philip was raised in an English family, all of whom loved him, but he knew he looked different. People obviously thought he seemed to be neither one thing nor the other. Even the ancient soothsayer’s prophecy could be interpreted two ways.

“ ‘You were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember – the rain also brings the flood.’”

As a young man, he found peace on ‘his’ island.

“There was a small island owned by my family about a mile out, thick with trees. It was accessible only from the beach that faced out to the open sea. I spent a lot of my afternoons there imagining I was a castaway, alone in the world.
. . .
Early in 1939, when I was sixteen, my father leased out the little island and warned us not to set foot on it as it was now occupied. It frustrated me that my personal retreat had been taken from me.”

Philip was home alone (except for servants of course) while the family was in London for several months, when a man with an unusual accent came to the house and asked to rent a boat. He introduced himself as Hayato Endo, pointed to the island, and said he lived there, but his boat had broken. Philip wasn’t happy, of course.

“I got up from the wicker chair and asked him to accompany me to our boathouse. But he stood, unmoving, staring out to the sea and the overcast sky. ‘The sea can break one’s heart, neh?’

This was the first time I heard someone describe what I felt. I stopped, uncertain what to say. Just a few simple words had encapsulated my feelings for the sea. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.”

This was the beginning of Philip’s hero-worship. Endo-san was older and took Philip under his wing offering to teach him martial arts and how to focus his mind.

“I felt no connection with China, or with England. I was a child born between two worlds, 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.

I began my lessons in ‘aikijutsu’ the following morning, entering into a ritual of learning that would continue largely unbroken for nearly three years.”

While his family was still away, he met the son of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

“ There were the usual speculative glances when I entered – ‘here comes the half-caste, ‘ I thought wryly.”
. . .
I knew people called him Kon, which I now did. He looked at me with a curiosity I found disconcerting. He radiated a sense of confidence for someone so youthful.
. . .
We talked for a long time on the beach that night; although we did not know it then, it would be the start of a strong friendship. It was only when Uncle Lim was driving me home that I realised Kon had not asked me a single question, that he had seemed to know all about me and perhaps even about Endo-san.”

This is a story about men – Philip and the men he reveres. The closeness between him and Endo-san is never spelled out as love, but there are scenes and incidents that hint at something more than comradeship.

Kon is more of a best pal. Thus, this English-Chinese boy became very close to his Japanese ‘sensei’ and to an up-and-coming leader of the Chinese community, representing the two countries already at war in China.

The British seemed oblivious to the danger the Japanese posed to Malaya, and when the invasion began, it was shocking and brutal, just as it was on the Thai-Burma Railway and in Changi prison, and everywhere else I’ve happened to read about WWII atrocities.

“When would I find a sense of my self, integrated, whole, without this constant pulling from all sides, each wanting my complete devotion and loyalty? “

Philip had to make terrible choices, trying to save his family and friends. Through it all, are the lessons he absorbed in his training. Endo-san had once told him that the sword is always the last option.

“‘We use swords in training,’ I pointed out.

‘What am I teaching you?’

‘To fight,’ I said.

‘No. That is the last thing I am teaching you. What I wish to show you is how not to fight. You must never, ever use what has been taught to you, unless your life is in danger. And even then, if you can avoid it, so much the better.’

He made me promise him that I would always remember that.”

This is a story, rich with history, that is brought to life through a boy growing up, caught between cultures and loved by both sides of his family, facing a world war.

Something that stood out to me was how many people spoke so many different languages. There are dialects within cultures, of course, and I lost track of who spoke what, although the author often pointed it out. Philip could use it to advantage because people often didn't expect him to understand them.

It is not all ‘plot’. The setting, the sights, the foods, the many cultural influences are all celebrated.

“Instead of going through miles of jungle, my father decided to drive around the island, heading to its westernmost tip before turning south.The road rose up on the shoulders of low hills and faithfully followed the curves of the coastline. Below us the thick green of the trees was stitched to the blue of the sea by a seam of white, endless surf. Light splattered like careless paint through the trees above us and the wind through our open windows smelled clean and unblemished, tasting of wet earth, damp leaves and always, always the sea.”

The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize. I’m currently reading some award-winners and nominees that sound interesting, and this certainly deserved a spot.

[Gearóid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars.....ten stars....who cares...this book is just brilliant!!!!
The first half of this book is quite chilled....very nice and beautiful to read
about aikido and Chinese history and life in Penang but you know things are going
to take a turn for the worse....
The second half.....all of a sudden the whole scene changes to one of savage cruelty
and brutality.
I just couldn't put the book down and felt compelled to finish the book in one day.
Which I did and it was brilliant!
Beautifully written and very moving and rewarding to read.
I just have to read his other books now.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

We sat without speaking. The sea sighed each time a wave collapsed on the shore like a long-distance runner at the finishing line. I have always felt a greater affinity with the sea at night. It is magnificent during the day, the waves strong and loud, slamming onto the beach, propelled by the force of the entire ocean behind it. But when night comes that force is spent, and the waves roll to the shore with the detachment of a monk unfurling a scroll.
*
Surely we are not fated to continually pay for the same mistakes? [...] The problem is, he said, some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, until eventually all our lives forget why we began paying in the first place. If you're able to remember, then you must make the greatest effort to put things right, now, before you forget again.
*
Sitting behind my desk on Beach Street I wondered if, by telling Michiko about Endo-san, I could let the echoes in my mind expand beyond the boundaries of my memory, so that their strength would finally weaken and fade forever into silence. A part of me wished dearly for that, for him to finally leave me. But the part that would always love him balked at the possibility of such an irreplaceable loss.
*
No one, I told myself, could ever understand how much I had suffered and to witness such sorrow without comprehending would be to cast dishonor upon it. So the hurt would be lodged inside, like the bullet within Isabel. I placed a heavy seal over my wound. No trace of my blood would ever show.
*
I could not bear to see her suffering. And I felt a selfish fear that I would not be able to tell her everything. I had waited so long for all of it to come out: the guilt, the regrets, the darkness that had filled my days for such an eternity. There was nobody else I could ever have spoken to about the mistakes of my life and to have found her, someone who had known and even loved Endo-san, was something I had never dared or hoped to ask for.
*
So time mischievous time, cruel time, forgiving time plays tricks on us again and again.
*
I thought again of the first moment we had met in this world. I could not blame him for coming into my life. And I could not blame him for leaving it, leaving me on my own to face the consequences of my choices and my actions in the war.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book more than five stars. It is the kind of book that reaches into your soul and leaves a scar there that will never disappear. A poignant and moving saga of choices, fates, destinies, struggles and regrets. Which of us has cannot look back and see moments that have separated us forever from others we love, times that our decisions cannot be understood and are too complicated to explain, choices that seem thrust upon us as if fate had all control and we had none.

Tan Twan Eng is a masterful storyteller and weaves his magic around the heart and soul of who his characters are. I cannot imagine anyone who would not care about these people in a very personal and committed way. I clung to the book and yet tried to move slowly so that I would not miss a word and to allow my imagination to provide me with sensory images of these people and their world.

If you have been disappointed lately with the authors you know (as has been my experience), this is an author that will shore you up and let you know that what you are looking for still exists. Take the ride. You will never regret it.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng's second novel. The cover was beautiful; the subject (Malaya during WWII) was important if somewhat obscure; and the main character, Yun Ling, was wise and strong (and vengeful) but an enigma. Intricate Japanese gardens and body tattoos would serve a metaphorical purpose.

Twan Eng's debut novel, The Gift of Rain, covers the same moment in time in Malaya. It's a good story - Twan Eng can tell a story - but it lacks the writer's touches of his second work. Where The Garden of Evening Mists was artsy, The Gift of Rain was cinematic instead. And I meant that as a pejorative. Cinematic as in fight scenes, swordplay and car chases.

See, in the little biography underneath Twan Eng's thumbnail picture on the flyleaf, we are told that the author, among other things, has a first-dan ranking in akido. Good for him. And they say 'Write what you know', except when they say 'Don't write what you know'. Choosing the former advise, Twan Eng draws his protagonist as young English-Chinese Malayan, trained by a Japanese akido master, Endo-san, his sensei. So Philip Hutton learns to kill as he learns the Japanese philosophy of harmony, all this as the Japanese come and subjugate his country. He unwittingly - (how dumb can you be?) - provides the necessary intelligence to Endo-san. When the takeover is complete, he agrees to act as a liason for the Japanese, hoping he can save some lives.

He came around his desk and put his hand on my shoulder. "Since you are going to be a member of the consulate, the first thing you should do is show your respect." He turned me around to the portrait of the emperor that hung on the wall. I knew what was required and so I bowed low and respectfully to it.

This doesn't work so well. He is viewed as a traitor by his family and neighbors, with good reason. A collaborator. Jou-kow in Malayan, meaning running dog. He hopes to save some lives. But then the beheadings start. And still he loves Endo-san.

It is Twan Eng's intent to leave the reader ambivalent about Endo-san, and, by extension, Philip Hutton. But I was not ambivalent at all.

[Lynne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much that I have to reread it. It touched something quite exquisite in my soul. Such beauty of the language. My ...

This book is absolutely exquisite (second reading as the other two) like Tan Twan Eng's two other novels "The Garden of Evening Mists" and "The House of Doors". All are sublime. If the author doesn't receive the Booker Prize for the last book I will be absolutely shocked!

The "Gift of Rain" centres around sixteen year old Philip Hutton, half Chinese and half English who finds himself caught between two cultures.

His Chinese morher dies when he's seven and he always feels isolated with his father and three siblings as his father's first wife was English.

With the family in England for six months, Philip meets the Japanese diplomat Endo-San, who is renting the island owned by the Hutton family off Penang.

A friendship immediately develops with the two but with tragic circumstances resulting from the invasion of Penang in 1941. This tests loyalties to family and country to the limit.

Oh, I so loved this book like the other two and I just hope that the fourth novel (if there is one?) doesn't take ten years to see the light of day as is the case with "The House of Doors"!

[BrokenTune]

DNF.

I tried about 75 pages of this over the last week and it is not doing anything for me for the following reasons:

1. This is a slow-build of a novel at a time when I am not in the mood for a slow-paced, potentially over-written story.

2. Although the story is set in Penang and I have an interest in the place, it seems to be rather similar to Tan Twan Eng's second book The Garden of Evening Mists, which also deals with a WWII setting.

3. I have a feeling that I can guess where this story is going, and if I am right, it will be very similar to The Harmony Silk Factory. Too similar for my liking.

So, I am going to set this one aside for a book that does not feel like a repetition right now.

No rating.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Story set in Penang off Malaysia during the Second World War. The main character Philip Hutton is the half caste son of the current owner of the influential Hutton trading firm and his now dead second Chinese wife (who was in turn the daughter of the pre-eminent Chinese mining magnate who also appears to be a Triad leader).

One day when he is around 14 and his family are in UK Philip is visited by a Japanese man Endo-San to who his father has rented the island opposite their house.

Endo San practices a martial art involving hand to hand and sword fighting - Philip becomes his pupil, Endo his “sensei” – philosophical guide and inspiration (and at least it is hinted lover). At the same time and despite repeated warnings Philip shows Endo around the Island despite the fact he is blatantly preparing the way for a Japanese invasion. When the Japanese arrives his father refuses to join the rest of the Westerners in fleeing and supposedly to protect him (although not achieving this at all) Philip accepts the role that Endo has been grooming him for of liaison for the Japanese with the locals while (unlike his friend – son of a Triad leader and fellow follower of a Japanese sensei) he rejects an opportunity to join the British resistance working with the communist guerrillas. Over time he increasingly threads a fine line between collaboration and resistance – eventually openly assisting his old friend. The book is set in the present day when Philip is visited by the ex lover of Endo San who is dying from atomic bomb wounds and finally opens up on his life.

The plot is considerably more complex than above – rather than a first novel it seems to be his first four or five novels: a story of a someone seen by society as “half caste” and who has divided loyalties, dealing with the brutality and difficult choices (although one annoying thing is that he so clearly seems to have made the wrong choice in collaboration) of the Japanese occupation; a martial arts movie; a sub-Alchemist Buddhist meditative fable on the issues of connectedness and reincarnation, combined with elements of supernaturalism (the last two make it like a WWI version of “The Matrix”); a vignette on a variation on “The Last Emperor” (his Grandfather was tutor to a forgotten predecessor to the last emperor).

Within what is actually an annoying read there is actually a good novel buried.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel of another world, Malaya in the late 1930s, the island of Penang to be specific. With beautifully descriptive prose, Tan Twan Eng introduces us to this rainforest setting with its varied population of British colonialists of long standing, local Malayans, many Chinese, and a new—and not welcome—slow influx of Japanese. The political atmosphere is becoming tense as the news from China is full of the horrors Japanese soldiers are inflicting on the people there.

Now in Georgetown, Philip Hutton, at 16, the youngest son of one of the leading British businessmen in the colony, meets a man who will impact and influence the rest of his life, Hayato Endo. Endo-san, a Japanese diplomat, has rented a small island near the Hutton home and Philip begins showing him around Penang island. He has a new purpose now in a place where he has always felt at odds due to his mixed ancestry, being both British and Chinese and not always feeling accepted by either.

From this meeting will develop friendship, knowledge, growth, devotion, misgivings, indecision, love and hate. The war will come too.

I found this to be a beautiful, emotional novel that led me to consider behavior in different ways than I might have before. It captures the unsure mind of a teenager as he finds a person he might trust then follows over the ensuing years as he, and we, see the results of his trust. The framing story used to access the details worked well for me.

I recommend this novel highly.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know this book got some rave reviews, but about halfway thru I almost abandoned it. Which is odd because when I started it, I was fully engrossed and had that happy feeling of finding a book that I looked forward to nestling with and entering. I found the writing to be too flowery, and I also got bored. I did skim the rest of the book, which says alot since once I decide I'm bored I usually completely abandon it. I wanted to know what happened, and historically it's fascinating. But the heart of the secondary character was short shifted, I never understood him, or even liked him enough to sympathize. He was remote, not examined enough to warrant the love that the main character and others feel for him. Therefore the relationships fell short - I never felt like I entered the lives of these characters except the protagonist's sister and father.

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The fortune-teller, long since dead, had said I was born with the gift of rain. I know now what she meant. Her words had not been a curse, nor had they been words of blessing. Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people’s lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity, and renewal. It washes away our pain and prepares us for another day, and even another life. Now that I am old I find that the rains follow me and give me comfort, like the spirits of all the people I have ever known and loved.”

As the story opens, Philip Hutton, a half-Chinese, half-British older man is living in Penang, Malaysia. For almost fifty years, Philip has been silent about his past and what happened during World War II. He meets Michiko, a past love of Hayato Endo, his aikido master. Philip tells Michiko of the years leading up to the war, and how he had met Endo, trained with him, and learned the Japanese language. It is a story of memory, trauma, and betrayal.

This is a beautifully written novel that brings together pieces and parts of memories from pre-war colonial Malaysia, British withdrawal, Japanese invasion, and occupation. There are multiple betrayals in this book. Michiko has also suffered traumas during the war, but her primary role is a listener. Young Philip is very trusting of Endo, despite repeated warnings from his family. We learn about Philip’s family members. He finally meets his Chinese grandfather, who introduces him to the cultural history of the Chinese in Malaysia.

“I felt no connection with China, or with England. I was a child born between two worlds, 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.”

But Philip’s close friendship with Endo will lead to tragedy. The reader will see it coming before Philip does. There are discussions of reincarnation and karma, which are important elements in the denouement. There are many moving parts in this novel and the author weaves them together skillfully. He worries about the safety of his family, considers becoming a spy, yet still possesses a love Endo and the Japanese culture. Philip must decide how to use his personal connection with Endo. He will eventually be viewed as both a protector and a traitor. The way this all transpires is intriguing and I became completely immersed in the story.

I had previously read and loved The Garden of Evening Mists. This is another example of historical fiction at its finest. Tan Twan Eng is become one of my favorite authors.

[Deea · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The road was lined with magnificent homes dating back to the 1920s. Many had been demolished, but in the geography of my memory I saw them every day, entire, complete, standing proudly in a row. And in my memory I recalled the people who had lived there, who had passed through those homes; the scandals and the tragedies of their lives."

For Philip Hutton, present is a scar of the past. In his old age, he can only open his eyes inward and relive his past, a past which has been witness to both great happiness and great loss for him. As an active and controversial participant of the World War II in Malaya, he was forced by circumstances to get involved in a whirlpool of events which took away his liberty of doing what was morally correct, but pushed him to do whatever it took to protect his family.

Half European, half Chinese (having a British father and a Chinese mother), he feels he doesn't belong anywhere: both Europeans and Chinese reject him, considering him half-breed and not one of their kind. This is why he is bullied in school and feels he doesn't belong even in his family where all the other members are genuine British. He shares the religious beliefs of his father, so he adopts or knows more about Christianity than about the religious beliefs of his mother's people and he is reluctant at the beginning to believe in the Eastern belief that we are living countless lives trying to expiate sins from the past until we get to the higher state of being called Nirvana.

"Some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, all our lives until eventually we forget why we began paying in the first place".

When he meets Endo-san, his Japanese neighbor, he feels there is a strange connection between them. He becomes his pupil although the association with Japanese was not seen with good eyes and step by step he begins to realize that they are kindred spirits that have known each-other for several lives and have shared experiences that shaped the course of their current life. He is also reluctant to believe that our lives are predestined and no matter what decisions we make, the outcome is the same. It is hard for him to accept that the concept of free will is just an imagined attribute Western people think they have. In the end however, this belief is the only thing that helps him live within the three walls of his prison: anger, sorrow and guilt. It's this belief that helps him cope with the death of the members of his family: Isabel, his 2 brothers, his father.

"To have the awareness that there is a greater power directing our destinies must give great comfort. It would give a sense of meaning to our lives, knowing that we are not running around vainly like mice in a maize".

His relation with Endo-san is one of a kind: it transcends history and it escapes time. They know each other so well that they can communicate their thoughts to each other without words as though they are part of the same brain. Their silences express a multitude of meanings to each other and can bring both relief and unthinkable grief. Philip learns from Endo-San to fight and to meditate and he models his strength through his lessons, his capacity of dealing with the world's hatred and love. He trusts him even when he hates him, he finds his strength in him, he accepts his betrayal and understands his motives before getting any explanation. He doubts his friend, but his love for him and his confidence in him is a lot stronger than his doubt and fortifies him to go on and on even when life seems to be devastating every bit of his spiritual power. He respects his friend's high sense of justice even when his actions are hard to digest.

This book is an adventure: a quest in the culture of Japan and China and their relations with the British, the impact they had on World War II. It is so very intense that it keeps you hooked to its pages, it enraptures your mind and it activates your imagination. It spiritually enriched me in ways beyond my power of comprehension. I am so glad to have discovered it now as it totally resonated with me.