Tag: historical fiction

Day Eleven: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

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Cover for Snow Flower and the Secret FanBest Book of Week 3!

Lisa See, the author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, explains that she was inspired to write the novel after learning about nu shu, a secret, simplified writing used by women in a remote area of China to communicate with each other for centuries. The writing was suppressed for years after the Japanese invasion of China and during the Cultural Revolution, so it is now known only by a few scholars who learned it from the last women who knew it.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a beautifully written story about the love between two women in 19th century China. Near the beginning of the novel, Lily’s mother delays the date of her foot binding a year from the traditional age of six so that she can enter into a special relationship, called laotong, with another girl named Snow Flower. Laotong, or “old same” girls must match each other as closely as possible in birth date and time, height, and other qualities, including the date of their foot binding. Snow Flower sends Lily an invitation to enter into this relationship written on a fan in nu shu. This relationship is supposed to be advantageous to Lily, the daughter of a farmer, because Snow Flower comes from a family that is higher in status and can teach her to be more refined. The end purpose of all this is to find her the best husband possible when the time comes.

The foot binding itself is horrifically described near the beginning of the novel, when Lily’s short life as a free child is ended by this process of trying to bend the foot so that all but the big toe meet the heel and it ends up as close to three inches long as possible.

At lot of the novel is about suffering. The way of life was circumscribed in many ways, with the women spending most of their lives in one room. As children and young women they are considered worthless burdens to their family until they “marry out.” Then they are considered burdens by their husbands and mothers-in-law until they justify their existence by having sons.

Lily’s relationship with Snow Flower opens up her world a bit. They visit a shrine together every year. Snow Flower comes to visit Lily, and they spend days and nights whispering, telling their secrets and hopes. They send messages to each other on their fan.

The hardest thing for me to explain is the extent of the innocence of these girls, how they are full of good will, despite their difficult and painful lives. How they try to do their best even though they are constantly criticized. How even the aphorisms and songs that they hear every day tell them their purpose is just to serve others, yet they try to be cheerful.

Lily relates the story from the viewpoint of an old woman to explain something that she did that she will always regret. Eventually, Lily’s successful marriage and good luck and Snow Flower’s loss of status lead to a divide between the women and then an apparent act of betrayal. The story effectively explores the linkage between love, hurt, and jealousy.

Day Six: Waverley

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Cover for WaverlyI have been trying to offer a mix here, not just mystery mystery mystery, and so far I have just reviewed books I’ve liked. But I plan to also review books I didn’t like. This book isn’t one of them; I’m just warning you.

I had a hard time even getting interested in reading anything by Sir Walter Scott after having been forced to plow through the dreaded and deadly dull Ivanhoe in high school. I tried rereading it again some years ago because sometimes things you find dull in high school are more interesting when you’re older, but it wasn’t. I have often wondered what criteria high schools use when picking the English curriculum, when there are much more vibrant classics available. I can only suppose that they thought a tale of knights, derring-do (whatever that is), and Richard the Lionheart would interest high school students. When you read Ivanhoe, it’s hard to imagine that at one time Scott’s books were waited for with bated breath by the whole family.

But most of us probably haven’t tried to read his Scottish novels, or the Waverley novels, as they are called. This review is about the novel called Waverley, presumably the one the others are named after. It was written in 1814 but is set in 1745. Scott’s Scots dialects are a little difficult—a glossary would be nice—and he can occasionally be a bit long-winded, but his Scottish novels are much more interesting and amusing than Ivanhoe.

Waverley is a dreamy, wealthy youth brought up in England who has been neglected by his father and raised by his uncle, a man of Jacobite sympathies. A romantic man of undetermined principles, he cannot decide what to do with himself, so he is sent off by his uncle to join the army.

On leave from a regiment stationed in Lowland Scotland, he goes to visit an old friend of his uncle. He makes a visit to the Highlands out of curiosity and ends up embroiled in the Jacobite conspiracy. He is charged with desertion and treason, mostly because he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Part of Scott’s intent, I believe, was to show the British of the times that the Highland Scots were not just a bunch of savages and to depict them realistically.

The book is entertaining and humorous at times, and also occasionally a little ponderous. Waverley is a hapless hero who finds himself drawn into one fix after another, which perhaps makes him a more modern protagonist than you would expect.

Day Five: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

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Cover for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De ZoetTie for Best Book of Week 1!

I have read two books by David Mitchell and they were completely different. The first that I read, Cloud Atlas, was a stunningly unusual science fiction novel divided into sections, where each section was much farther in the future and was narrated by a character speaking in a patois of English that got a little harder to understand. Eventually, the sections all fitted together like a puzzle. It was fascinating. Others apparently thought so, too, because it was short-listed for six awards, including the Man Booker Prize.

But this review is for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a historical novel about late 18th Century Japan. Jacob is a clerk for the Dutch East Indies company who arrives in Japan in 1799. An honest, hard-working young man, he has signed on for a six-year term so that he can earn enough money to go home and marry his sweetheart, Anna.

Jacob finds that foreigners are only allowed to live on an island called Dejima in the Nagasaki Harbor and they cannot set foot on the Japanese mainland. Only certain Japanese, some interpreters and court officials, are allowed on Dejima. But the Japanese students of a Swedish physician are allowed, and one of them is the midwife Orito Aibagawa. Jacob is fascinated by her and ends up falling in love with her.

Jacob’s boss claims to intend to clean up the rampant corruption in the company, so he sets Jacob the task of reconciling the books from the previous years, which makes him some enemies. When Jacob refuses to sign a bogus manifest, he is left on the island with only his enemies as his boss departs.

Orito’s father dies, and her stepmother sells her off to a mountaintop shrine where sinister rites are being performed.

The story was full of interesting descriptions of the customs and laws of 18th Century Japan. And this reminds me that I need to pick up another David Mitchell book soon and read it.