Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See
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Book Reviews of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel
Book Review: An Okay Read
Summary: 3 Stars
The first book I read by Lisa See was Peony in Love. I truly loved that book. I bouth this one in hopes that it too would captivate me like Peony in Love did, but no such luck. I was bit bored half way through the book... It wasn't a bad read, but it just wasn't what I was expecting. Book Review: would have been more interesting as nonfiction
Summary: 2 Stars
The back copy will have you believe that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is an enriching tale of female empowerment, when in fact is is just the opposite. It's the story of female knuckling-under and backbiting, the greed of women who have so little power that they will clutch at everything they can get, even to the point of destroying someone they loved.
The narrator, Lily, is a remarkably undeveloped character; she's really nothing more than a mask that the author/reader puts on for a time to get a look into nineteenth-century China.
Lily's defining characteristic, stated early in the book, is that she "wants to be loved." The author goes to great lengths to demonstrate how Lily tries to find love and then destroys what she loved when she perceives herself rejected. This is supposed to be the theme and plot of the book. However, despite See's constant reiterations of how the bond between the two girls is supposed to be stronger than marriage, I found the narration too flat and unemotional to allow me to care.
The early parts, the accounts of the girls' childhood and everyday lives, are interesting for their cultural insight. The prose tends to be a bit maudlin, however, with frequent references to bad times ahead that felt very manipulative. When the bad times come, they are sudden, random and not really related to the inner conflicts of the characters. Yes, in real life tragedy can strike without warning, but the narrative flatness became almost ridiculous during these scenes--Lily reports on the emotions of everybody else with the detachment of a TV camera. Furthermore, nobody learns or changes anything as a result of the bad times. Everybody pretty much goes on as before.
This made the disasters feel sprinkled-in, as if the author or editor felt the need to inject some excitement into the book. There is a really grueling section in which the army is invading and everyone flees to the hills,. While camping out under the elements, we get treated to murder, child abuse, spousal abuse, sexual deviancy, greed, theft, starvation, filth, betrayal, and bloody miscarriages, but then the army retreats, everyone goes home and pretty much never mentions it again--our narrator doesn't even suffer any lasting effects. It's as if the whole invasion was a device to introduce the women who would come between Lily and Snow Flower.
By the time I reached the end of the book, I felt as if I had just been treated to an outline of the author's notes. She had done her research and she wanted us to see every bit of it. I can understand why she used the devices she did--Lily was looking back on 80 years of her life and it made sense that she would be somewhat emotionally divorced from the worst of it. Furthermore, the cultural "voice" and training not to indulge in self-pity were appropriate and consistent. The problem was it robbed the novel of any personal attachment to the characters. Their problems did not seem important enough to deserve more attention than all of the political and social craziness going on around them. See tries to justify this by mentioning, repeatedly, how a good wife would never seek to involve herself in the outside world, but her need to explain away these shortcomings in her plot made me suspect that she just didn't have the skill to convey anything but the most literal parts of the story. There is no subtext here other than what she spoon-feeds to the reader.
The end result, for me, was a book that seemed very manipulative and catering to a narrow audience of masochistic post-feminist sinophiles. I guess that's who it's intended for: Women who want to wallow in the simultaneous romance and horror of a time when a woman's highest ambition was to be a beautiful, mutilated possession--a time far enough removed from ours that it can seem like a fantasy, something to wring your hands over instead of taking action against. Something like that, anyway. Footbinding happened. It sucked. But for a modern American audience to cry over it seems self-indulgent to me.
I personally would have preferred to see more about the secret language and seen it used to enrich the women's lives. There are allusions to this early on in the book, but they were not picked up and expounded upon. Some positive spin, some notion of triumph under adversity, would have been a nice counterpoint to all the gloom and despair and guilt.
Book Review: GREAT FOR BOOK GROUP
Summary: 4 Stars
THE DEPTH OF THESE TWO WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIP MADE FOR A GREAT DISCUSSION IN OUR BOOK GROUP. I DON'T KNOW IF I WEPT MORE FOR THE DAUGHTERS' FOOT BINDINGS OR THE MOTHERS WHO HAD TO WATCH!Book Review: Like A Mandarin Duck My Heart Soared
Summary: 5 Stars
In this novel Lisa See gives us a harrowing and compelling insight to the secret inner realm of women's world in China during the early 1800's. See assures us repeatedly that the women of this book do not take on an adventure full of action and daring but is an emotional and heart wrenching story of the silent and understated life that is woven delicately in the ladies upper chamber.
Not since my reading of Kite Runner had I encountered a youthful relationship of such loyalty, depth and affection that it seems to transcend the normal boundaries of life. The two women Lily and Snow Flower are laotong, a special arranged relationship that composes a "deep heart love." Lily, the narrator is writing this story in the twilight years of her life in preparation for her funeral but more importantly to pay homage to this most treasured friendship.
Through her story we see through the eyes of a willful but obedient girl who dedicates herself fully to the ways of her culture. Although we have heard of foot binding, the urgency that women tried for male babies, and the subservience of the women in the house to their husbands, reading about Lily's experience with it brings a much fuller and deeper understand of what these women truly endured. While all of this adds to the flavor and significance to the novel, it is the kinship that develops between Lily and Snow Flower that truly captivates the reader.
It becomes one of those rare books that you can't put down, learn from and recommend to all of your friends. Read it and you won't regret it.
Book Review: Very Weak and unrealistic
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is just not well written. It feels flat and one dimensional. You do not get an emotional attachment for any of the characters in the book. One thing that stood out for me is that it was more like a dumbed down happy ending type book that we in the American culture prefer. Life was hard for women in ancient china, thought of as worthless until they could bear sons. "Love" as we know it didn't really exists between the men and women. It was an arrangement a way of extending the family but in this book all the men "love" their women even when they are beating them senseless. Don't get me wrong some couples may have become affectionate to each other after the years had pass but is was not the same notion of "love" as we Americans understand. Life and Deaths in this book happens so quickly to characters you don't really know so it has little impact on you. I didn't feel like I was transported to this time period and got to know the culture or the women. I felt more like a passerby speeding along getting little bits and pieces of the landscape. Lily and Snowflower never became real people but a representation of the culture of women the author wanted us to view. I think this book is lack in showing the true meaning of what it was like having to live only by obligations, honor and rituals that was the mainstay of Chinese culture.