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This is a lovely, well written story of the power and importance of female companionship. If you have had a good female friend in your life for many years, you will enjoy as well as relate to this story with ease and emotion. Lisa Lee writes from another time period and place with grace and beauty, transporting you to another world.This story reminds you about the true purpose of friendship and how it evolves throughout the years. I enjoyed this book immensely.
One of them made a better match than the other, thanks to the horrible sacrifice she made as a young girl. This novel is lovely. Both spend most of their married life behind the high walls of their new family's houses, but it didn't stop them from staying in touch and comforting one another. I have been to China several times and have special connection with the culture of the country- the ceremonies, the tradition, the way women were perceived. This book does the justice to a wonderful, rich Chinese culture.The two main characters both got married early in their lives. One particular scene might even suggest a feeling between the two that could be more than friendship, but I think it's just the way women reach out to one another and fight loneliness and fear. This novel is exquisite, it's the best way to describe it.
Actually, it made me sick. I guess they were conditioned to not really love daughters, but I don't know how they could not. When it was time for Lily and Snow Flower's daughters to have this done to them, I kept expecting the mothers to at least agonize over it, but no, it was more like some big fun time and maybe their daughters could be "Old Sames like their mothers. I guess it was a good story, but I never got over my anger at the foot binding. I had, of course, heard of foot binding, but not to such an awful extreme. Lily enjoyed running with her brother and then wham.
That's it. I could not imagine a mother who would consign their child to such pain and the possibility of death all for tiny feet to please a man. Lily and Snow Flower at age seven are paired to be lifelong friends called "old Sames." Girls in this time period in China, this story tells us, must endure the pain of foot binding leaving them to totter on tiny feet and sit behind lattice windows, engaged in sewing and other lady-like doings. I wonder if any man in those "man worshipping" years in Chinese culture ever thanked his god for being so blessed. I think I might have suffocated any girl child I gave birth to, if I'd lived in that time and place. The book takes Lily and Snow Flower through their lives of marriage and children and some kind of an uprising that sends them fleeing into the mountains, the women enduring the torture of running on tiny feet. If he didn't he sure should have.
I was horrified when Lily's little sister died from blood poisoning caused by her bones being broken and her feet bound so tightly. I could not imagine a life of such confinement for a child. That finished it for me. The "big-footed" girls worked as servants or in the fields, laboring like the ox, but I'm not sure but what would have been preferable. But, perhaps she was the lucky one. Isn't there an old Jewish praise about a man who gives thanks that he was not born a woman. Eunice Boeve author of Maggie Rose and Sass
A masterpiece. This is definately one of those books that leave a permanant imprint on your heart and mind.
Definately the #1 read for this calendar year (which starts each August). The Fascinated Readers (historical fiction book club which I lead) agree that this is absolutely one of our best reads in three years of reading.
The historical facts were informative without bogging down the story. The characters came alive in this very human page turner.
The characters were so real and believable it was like reading a real diary instead of fiction. It will transport you to another place, time, and life.
You will not be disappointed.
They're making this into a movie. Whose character does Hugh Jackman play. I thought the story was about two Chinese women in China. Is there a white man in the book too.
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