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Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Reviewed by Melanie Ho
Shanghai Girls is a moving story of two sisters whose lives are seemingly altered beyond recognition after their father sells them away to be wives of men they've never met and much less like. Worlds of riches and poverty collide: privileged lives in Shanghai and unfamiliar sacrifices in California, the lesson being that the family you're born into sometimes isn't as good as the family you make and yet blood often trumps all.
Like Lisa See's previous novels, Peony in Love and Snow Flower and Secret Fan, Shanghai Girls is historical fiction, this time set between 1937 and 1957, and like those previous books, it follows a similar vein: rich writing of a uniquely Chinese experience.
Twenty-one year old Pearl and eighteen-year old May want for nothing and spend their time as Beautiful Girls in cosmopolitan Shanghai: modern, materialistic, unaware and living a life of relative luxury and the carefree attitude often associated with youth. One day their father tells them he has gambled away the family's fortunes and now with debts he cannot pay, he has given away his once-successful rickshaw business and sold his daughters to two Los Angeles men, who have come back to China to find their wives.
Pearl and May struggle as they come to terms with their new lives. A Chinese zodiac theme carries throughout the story: Pearl is a strong Dragon, May is a beautiful and placid Sheep. Pearl, the narrator, demonstrates a certain strength, though her vulnerability makes her human as do fits of unrequited love and jealously of her sister's beauty.
As the novel spans twenty years, See moves from one phase of Pearl and May's life to another and yet again to a third and fourth. See has done her research - this much is certain: it is clear, not in how the sisters grow older, but in the environments which help change them. Shanghai Girls is full of details, small minute ways of living (at time so many that the story risks lagging) and explorations that seem intended to inform as much as they do paint a setting.
See's language can at times be a bit be bit jarring, a bit too cute. Although the harsh realities of the world are spoken about in plain terms, See cannot break away from describing sex as anything but "doing the husband-wife thing". The novel's final crisis also seems to end too abruptly in contrast to the flow of the rest of the novel.
Shanghai Girls nevertheless has a moving plot and a story which will be new to many readers.
--
Melanie Ho is a writer who has reviewed for publications in Hong Kong and Canada.
by Lisa See
Reviewed by Melanie Ho
Shanghai Girls is a moving story of two sisters whose lives are seemingly altered beyond recognition after their father sells them away to be wives of men they've never met and much less like. Worlds of riches and poverty collide: privileged lives in Shanghai and unfamiliar sacrifices in California, the lesson being that the family you're born into sometimes isn't as good as the family you make and yet blood often trumps all.
Like Lisa See's previous novels, Peony in Love and Snow Flower and Secret Fan, Shanghai Girls is historical fiction, this time set between 1937 and 1957, and like those previous books, it follows a similar vein: rich writing of a uniquely Chinese experience.
Twenty-one year old Pearl and eighteen-year old May want for nothing and spend their time as Beautiful Girls in cosmopolitan Shanghai: modern, materialistic, unaware and living a life of relative luxury and the carefree attitude often associated with youth. One day their father tells them he has gambled away the family's fortunes and now with debts he cannot pay, he has given away his once-successful rickshaw business and sold his daughters to two Los Angeles men, who have come back to China to find their wives.
Pearl and May struggle as they come to terms with their new lives. A Chinese zodiac theme carries throughout the story: Pearl is a strong Dragon, May is a beautiful and placid Sheep. Pearl, the narrator, demonstrates a certain strength, though her vulnerability makes her human as do fits of unrequited love and jealously of her sister's beauty.
As the novel spans twenty years, See moves from one phase of Pearl and May's life to another and yet again to a third and fourth. See has done her research - this much is certain: it is clear, not in how the sisters grow older, but in the environments which help change them. Shanghai Girls is full of details, small minute ways of living (at time so many that the story risks lagging) and explorations that seem intended to inform as much as they do paint a setting.
See's language can at times be a bit be bit jarring, a bit too cute. Although the harsh realities of the world are spoken about in plain terms, See cannot break away from describing sex as anything but "doing the husband-wife thing". The novel's final crisis also seems to end too abruptly in contrast to the flow of the rest of the novel.
Shanghai Girls nevertheless has a moving plot and a story which will be new to many readers.
--
Melanie Ho is a writer who has reviewed for publications in Hong Kong and Canada.
Available in Asia from Paddyfield.com
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