|
Main Page
REVIEWS From the San Diego Union Tribune: By Julie Brickman Nothing is as riveting as a story that informs as it charms: What do we read for, if not to live alternate lives and learn about extraordinary settings? Lisa See's new novel, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," takes us into remote 19th-century China, where girls had their feet bound – meaning crushed to the size of lily flowers – in a ritual of beauty that started at age 6 and took two full years to complete. From foot-binding onward, girls and women lived secluded in a second-story chamber of their household, because " ... the difference between nei – the inner realm of the home – and wei – the outer realm of men – lay at the very heart of Confucian society." At 80, the narrator, Lily, is the senior woman of a wealthy household, powerful enough that she can speak her mind about her life's treasures and errors. Born in 1823 in the Hunan province, Lily started off as "a second worthless girl" in a poor farming family. Because her feet were high in the arch and potentially breathtaking, she had the potential to marry well and elevate the status of her family. She could also enter a second formal match, to another woman, a lifetime best friend called a sworn sister or laotong. "A laotong match is as significant as a good marriage," Lily's aunt explained. "A laotong relationship is made by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and eternal fidelity. A marriage is not made by choice and has only one purpose – to have sons." "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" is the story of such a friendship. Snow Flower becomes Lily's sworn sister, or "old same," meaning perfect match. Snow Flower is from a high family in a prestigious neighboring town, her grandfather an imperial scholar. She can teach Lily the social rituals of important families. Lily can teach her the humble arts of cooking and cleaning. Rural, 19th-century China was a culture in which education and scholarship was limited to the male elite. Secluded from age 7 until death, "married out" into a husband's family, where they remained abject in stature and subservient to their husband's mother unless they had sons, women were isolated from anyone who cared about them personally. What they said and how they communicated was rigidly formalized, learning the calligraphy of men was prohibited, so they developed a secret writing called nu shu. Only in nu shu and only to each other could they write or speak from the heart. The first communication between Snow Flower and Lily was inscribed on a fan in the code of nu shu. The secret fan became the journal of their lives. That fan guides Lily as she records her memoirs. Because she is old and times have changed, she filters her memories through the late-life awareness of what mattered and what didn't. And what mattered most of all was the friendship with Snow Flower. This is a stunning setup for describing a culture inside a story, and Lisa See takes full advantage of it. On every page, she provides fascinating details of the lives of women in China. ("Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.") The particulars suggest that the indenture and confinement of women by men started in the Far East and traveled west across India to the Middle East, where it appears daily in the dark curtains of cloth women wear to prevent themselves from being visible participants in the public arena of men. Lisa See is the author of four previous books, a memoir that reconstructs four generations of Chinese-American heritage called "On Gold Mountain" and three mystery novels set in China. The deft weave of fact and fiction stands out as her signature strength: All her books probe themes like archaeological theft, the smuggling of undocumented immigrants, sweatshop labor. "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" contains such an unexpurgated description of the tortures of foot binding and the miseries of walking on tiny, folded feet that I looked up pictures of bound feet on the Web. To my horror, I discovered that they look exactly like high-heeled shoes. That is the brilliance of the light See shines between cultures. Julie Brickman is on the fiction faculty of the brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, Ky. She lives in Southern California. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer Loyalty and love abide in a culture that cripples girls When our narrator Lily is 6 years old, her mother strikes her hard across the face, a slap for good luck and to ward off evil spirits on the cusp of Lily's foot binding. "Although my face stung, inside I was happy," she tells us. "That slap was the first time Mama had shown me her mother love, and I had to bite my lips to keep from smiling." Appalled, I was also thoroughly hooked. It is a measure of author Lisa See's craft that by the time a grown Lily slaps her own daughter, Jade, we no longer register surprise. The reader has learned enough about the ways of women in provincial 19th-century China to anticipate the blow. In her fourth book, See has triumphed, writing an achingly beautiful, understated and absorbing story of love. The love is between Lily and Snow Flower, her laotong, a match with another girl that Chinese families once considered as significant as a good marriage. Laotong means "old same" and served as a designated soul mate to help each woman navigate a life of sorrow, pain and confinement. All three converge in foot binding, a four-year ordeal that Lily describes as the novel begins in a straightforward, step-by-step fashion. It sears a reader to know that the toes finally break and rattle loose in the bindings, that mothers deform their daughters' feet to achieve "golden lilies," dumpling-sized feet considered highly desirable and highly erotic. The child of a poor farmer, Lily carries on her crippled feet the prospect of marriage into a better life - and therefore the survival of her extended family. "Snow Flower and the Se cret Fan" is so rich in psychol ogy, feminine high stakes and marital intrigue that it evokes the work of Jane Austen. The warring matchmakers are marvelous characters, and the story made me recall the girl closest to my own laotong. See's novel contains all the elements - joy, knowledge, betrayal, erotica - that give female friends a power over each other that husbands cannot match. Lily tells her story chronologically, introducing herself in old age: "I am what they call in our village 'one who has not yet died' - a widow, eighty years old." See's writing calls as little attention to itself as Lily's plain, formal voice, but both accumulate in power. The reader picks up vocabulary from context and tension from Lily's forthright disclosure that much will go wrong. This novel has none of the overripe, operatic tone of "The Joy Luck Club." See forms her characters as subtly as strokes of calligraphy. Typhoid and a political uprising move the plot, but so does the Chinese insistence on sons, which saturates every page of this book and every day of these women's lives. Because they were confined to upstairs chambers in their fathers' homes, then their husbands', Lily and Snow Flower must find a way to cultivate their bond. The pair write on a secret fan in Nu Shu, a 1,000-year-old language thought to be the only one ever invented and sustained for the exclusive use of women. See tells us in her end note that Nu Shu obsessed her, that she traveled from her Los Angeles home to the Chinese province of Jiangyong to meet surviving practitioners. Here she found the remarkable, tucked-away town of Tongkou, in which she set her novel. Last year, Ann Patchett garnered a lot of favorable attention for her depiction of female friendship in the memoir "Truth and Beauty." That book pales to near-insignificance next to the truth and beauty in "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan." It moved me to tears of recognition. From the Baltimore Sun: Secrets, misery in a Chinese woman's tale From the Los Angeles Times: From the Washington Post: Scripted in the Shadows During the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s , an old woman fainted in a rural train station. While trying to identify her, authorities found scraps of paper with writing they had never seen, leading them to think she was a spy. But scholars identified the script as nu shu , a writing that had been used exclusively by women for over a thousand years in a remote area of southern Hunan province. Nu shu was different from conventional Chinese script in that it was phonetic and its interpretation was based on context. Years later when author Lisa See became aware of nu shu , her discovery turned into an obsession, resulting in her fourth novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan . Written in the style of a memoir, the book is narrated by 80-year-old Lily Yi as she looks back on her life. Her story begins in 1828 in her village of Puwei in southwestern China. Her father is a hardworking, respected farmer. As in all traditional Chinese families, sons are revered and daughters are seen as temporary obligations, to be passed on to other families at the time of marriage. Even at age 5, Lily, the third daughter in a family of five children, understands her position. But everything changes on the day the village diviner arrives to help her mother choose a propitious date for Lily and her cousin to begin having their feet bound. The diviner declares that Lily is no ordinary child. A special matchmaker announces that Lily's feet have particularly high arches and, if properly bound, could be shaped into golden lilies -- those highly coveted tiny, perfect feet that might be their key to prosperity. "Fate -- in the form of your daughter -- has brought you an opportunity," the matchmaker says. "If Mother does her job properly, this insignificant girl could marry into a family in Tongkou." Thus in one day, Lily's position in her family changes -- she remains a commodity, but one that now needs to be nurtured so that the family can realize her full value. Later the matchmaker also suggests to Lily's mother a laotung match for her daughter, a relationship with a girl from the best village in the county. She is the same age as Lily, and their friendship is meant to last a lifetime, being perhaps even more profound than marriage itself. This match would signal to her future family that Lily is not only a woman with perfect golden lilies but also one who has proved her loyalty. When Lily meets her laotung, Snow Flower, she is given a fan with a secret message written in nu shu script inside. So begins a correspondence between Lily and her new friend in nu shu -- a language considered by men to be of little importance because it belonged to the realm of women. But for Lily and Snow Flower it provides an opening for expressing and sharing their hopes and fears in lives that are otherwise powerless, repressed and bound by rigid social conventions. In the years that follow, Lily teaches Snow Flower the domestic arts of cooking and cleaning, while Snow Flower teaches Lily the more refined arts of weaving and calligraphy. Their bond also deepens during the extended visits Snow Flower makes to Lily's home. Through See's careful, detailed descriptions of life in a remote 19th-century Chinese village, we experience a world where women spend their days in upstairs chambers, kowtowing to elders, serving tea and communicating in nu shu. She reveals to us the horrors of foot binding (foot bent back, bones broken and reshaped), a young girl's innocent dreams of life in a new home mingled with fears of being married off to a stranger, and the obsession with bearing sons. Woven through all this is the friendship between Lily and Snow Flower, which is compromised when Lily misinterprets a letter from her friend, cutting herself off from the one person she loves most. Years later, when Lily begins to understand her own failings and the depth of Snow Flower's affection for her, it is too late. She must find other ways to seek forgiveness and make amends. The wonder of this book is that it takes readers to a place at once foreign and familiar -- foreign because of its time and setting, yet familiar because this landscape of love and sorrow is inhabited by us all. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a triumph on every level, a beautiful, heartbreaking story. · From Booklist Snow Flower is an Entertainment Weekly Editor's Choice and an A rating. "You can relish See's extraordinary fourth novel as a meticulously researched account of women's lives in 19th century China, where it is "better to have a dog than a daughter.... You can also savor See's marvelous narrative as a timeless portrait of a contentious, full-blooded female friendship, one that includes, over several decades, envy, betrayal, erotic love, and deep-seated loyalty." From Publisher's Weekly: ADVANCE PRAISE“Lisa See has written her best book yet. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is achingly beautiful, a marvel of imagination of a real and secret world that has only recently disappeared. It is a story so mesmerizing that the pages float away and the story remains clearly before us from beginning to end.” Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club “Only the best novelists can do what Lisa See has done, to bring to life not only a character but an entire culture, and a sensibility so strikingly different from our own. This is an engrossing and completely convincing portrayal of a woman shaped by suffering forced upon her from her earliest years, and of the friendship that helps her to survive.” Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha “I was entranced by this wondrous book—the story of a secret civilization of women who actually lived in China not long ago…Magical, haunting fiction. Beautiful.” Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
Snow Flower| Flower Net | On Gold Mountain | The Interior | Half + Half
|