Customer Reviews
A Book I will never forget - By: Alexa Crippen, 10 Oct 2008 
This was a true find. I've recommended it to everyone I know. A moving, troubling, unrelenting story of a young man's life & his search for meaning. It was on the Man Booker prize list & it deserved it.
Beautiful book - By: Saucy, 06 Oct 2008 I loved this book & was sorry to finish it. The prose is beautiful with not one superfluous word. The story is important & well told. I disagree with some previous reviewers; yes, not alll questions are answered & not alll motivations are explained, but isn't that just like life? Well done, Tan Twan Eng, please write another book!
a very moving book - By: Pen pal, 01 Oct 2008 
Philip Hutton is half Chinese & half English but in many ways does not reallly know where he belongs in the world. He has English siblings & an English father & his mother died when he was still very young. He many ways he perceives himself as an outsider within his family. By chance he strikes up a very powerful friendship with Endo. Endo becomes his mentor & helps him to finallly come to terms with himself & who he is & his place in the world, but it comes at a very high price. There is a code of honour running through the whole book, & the descriptions of the whole discipline of aikido makes one want to go out & start training oneself. There were a couple of scenes in the book that moved me to tears which demonstrates how well one becomes drawn into the lives of both Philip & Endo & Philip's family.
A good read mostly! - By: H. Lacroix, 27 Aug 2008 The gift of rain succeeds very well in recreating the atmosphere of Penang just before & also during WW2 & the Japanese occupation. It tells the story of young Philip Hutton, half English & half Chinese, who feels at odds with his family as he thinks he doesn't belong to either community.It is also the story of the consuming relationship he builds with his Japanese sensei Endo san & the complex emotions he has to go through as love,faith & admiration have to battle distrust & bitterness & a powerful sense of betrayal when the Japanese finallly become the new masters of the island. Philip's life is rendered even more difficult when he decides to collaborate with the invading forces so as to protect his family. A traitor for them & for alll the people who knew him when he grew up, he hides the fact that he also betrays his new masters & tries to save lives whenever he can.
The author reallly succeeded in drawing the different communities & his portrayal of the emotional turmoil of the protagonists doesn't fail to interest & move. It is therefore a pity that the novel has flaws. One of these is that less care has been taken in writing about Philip's English family whose members (apart from his father)seem two dimensional caricatures of real people.Another one is that since, right at the beginning of the book we know that Philip aged 70 or thereabouts is alone in the world, having lost alll his family during the war, the writer then has to 'bump ' them alll off, (none can be saved)and doesn't always manage to do it creditably (I mean in particular the death of his sister & mostly his father's). How can we believe that while Philip's secret partisan activities have finallly been discovered & that he has been branded a traitor & condemned to die, his sensei, however well placed in the Japanese hierarchy, can save his life? ' I can only save one of you, you or your father, & your father wants you to live',this is more or less the content of Endo san 's speech.Highly improbable! As for Philip's only friend's death,here we go again & we are asked to suspend our powers of disbelieving way beyond the reasonable.Kon has been a guerilla fighting the enemy with great success & how does he meet his end? Is he killed by his enemies? No! He is shot at by a female comrade & former lover who 'hasn't been the same since she had to abort the baby she carried'What a logical explanation for shooting the best hope you have of defeating your worst nightmare, namely the Japanese invaders.
It is a great pity that those examples of bad melodrama somewhat detract from the otherwise very good impression the book left.They are however only moments in a long & mostly interesting journey & shouldn't make you feel the book isn't worth reading because it is.
Thought Provoking - By: Radar Rosie, 15 Jul 2008 I have a son who practises martial arts - his training has made The Gift of Rain more enjoyable. The mysticism of the Chinese & Japanese cultures set against our own makes for a thoughtful reading. The theme I found most intriguing lies with in the central characters of the book being extremely physicallly strong but are able to hold back & keep negative thoughts & deeds in check - couple this with an insight to the Buddha way of thinking & you have perhaps a recipe for the idealist way living we may like to aspire to. A simple motto "just because you can doesn't necessary mean you should........" springs to mind. Living with consequences is another theme & becomes more poignant with the passing of time - historical world events underpinnng the storyline have a huge impact on how your view might be changed. For me , Tan Twan is a breathe of fresh air & shows us that authors the world over are able to give us a tantalising glimpse into their cultural worlds
