The story of a friendship between two girls in 19th-century China.

This book shows a vivid picture of a woman's role in 19th-century Chinese society (with a pretty gruesome description of footbinding and its possible consequences); I don't know how accurate it really is, but it seemed quite well-researched to me.

RELEASE NOTES:

At the meet-up!

picked up at the meeting

One of several similar themed books I've read (Secrets of the Jin-shei being another example), this is good, but not the best. Early part of the book is good, but when the two women get married and moved away from each other, I was not convinced of the emotional levels that carried through into later life - it was all one sided, and a story told looking back from a very old age, so you got little about the narrator's family life and virtually none about her "old same's".

Picked up from the book buffet, I've heard good reports of this book. Thought I'd already JE'd all my books but this one had escaped from the pile.

Another book returns to Birmingham from London!

A fascinating read - the setting was so unfamiliar it read like a fairy story initially. I found the detailed description of the practice and culture of footbinding particularly interesting. Not read much Chinese literature before but would like to read more after this!

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Bringing to this afternoon's meet-up

Looked interesting ....

Some books set in other lands and other times are clearly about, or clearly could be about, the here and now: the emotions are universal, the events recognisable even if they are seen through the stained glass of another culture. This is not one of those. The very different life led by the women at the centre of the story and the nature of their arranged relationship is so very Chinese that it remains the main point of fascination in what is a sad, sometimes overly-sentimental, story of friendship and love lost through lack of communication. Was the choice of a title that has at its heart a means of sending messages a deliberate irony?

An fascinating read, an interesting story, but not, I thought, wonderful writing.

A word of warning to the squeamish - this contains a particularly graphic account of foot-binding and its consequences.

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Picked up after the BookCrossing meetup today to use to stock one of my Official BookCrossing Zones.

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Now available on the OBCZ shelf in the iLounge, University of Birmingham Main Library.

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This is no longer in the iLounge OBCZ as of today, so marking it as travelling pending a Journal Entry.

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If you join BookCrossing, you, like everyone else who has owned this book so far, will be able to see where it goes next!