Turns out I am very bad about learning much about the book I am going to read. There have been two books so far this year that I assumed would be novels, only to learn a handful of pages in that they were in fact nonfiction. Then there’s The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, which I thought would be nonfiction and was, go figure, a novel. In my defense, it was one of two books recommended simultaneously by my mother and the other, Killers of the Flower […]
Peony in Love
Peony in Love was, well, more the story of how a girlish obsession could turn into a one-note bit of character development. Sadly, Peony is a boring young lady, rich and well-bred, and betrothed to a rather mushy-headed young man. They meet once, never once trading identities (it’s once a night for three nights, actually, but they do so little they could have done it all in one night) and based on that, Peony is In Love. Her mild obsession with the Chinese opera “The […]
Historical Fluffiness from the Forties
Lisa See, the author of [i]Snow Flower and the Secret Fan[/i], which was a really good book, has delivered a less interesting and slightly faded remix of the same themes Snow Flower had – namely, friendship and Chinese culture. The characters are wooden: good-girl Grace, scandalous Ruby, cantankerous Helen. The story limps along like a wounded homing pigeon, following the “glamour” of the Forties while skipping any of the realities of the second World War. (It does make an appearance, as do the Japanese internment […]
A story of pain, suffering and regret
Oh good lord this was a sad book. Not just what the main character goes through by simply being a woman born in China in the 1800s (hint: not a great time/place to be a woman), but also the pain she causes herself through simple misunderstandings and bad choices. “I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one in the same.” Lily, now 80 years old, reflects back on her life in this fictional autobiography. The book begins with two […]