Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: "Peony is the cherished only child of the first wife of a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Yet she is betrothed to a man she has never met and as her sixteenth birthday approaches, she has spoken to no man other than her father and never ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the Chen Family Villa. She is trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage and the romantic lyrics from the Chinese classic novel The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a small theatrical troupe to perform scenes from the epic opera of The Peony Pavilion - a live spectacle that few women have ever seen - in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. Peony's mother is against the production: "Unmarried girls should not be seen in public." But Peony's father prevails. Women will watch the opera from behind a screen to hide them from view and through a crack, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave and is immediately bewitched by him. So begins Peony's journey of love, desire and sorrow as Lisa See's haunting new novel takes readers back to seventeenth-century China and into the heart and soul of an unforgettable heroine."

I thought the book veered off towards the ridiculous in part two, where Peony becomes a ghost and the rest of the action in the book crosses back and forth between the real world and the spirit realm.
However, the portrayal of Chinese culture was interesting, just as in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by the same author.
I offered this to someone as a RABCK, but she never replied, so I will be wild releasing this in Cape Town soon.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Will be released tonight somewhere in the Artscape theatre complex.

ETA: I was unable to release this as planned, so will release the book at the meetup on 23 May.

Got book at my first bookcrossing meeting at Obzcafe. Was great meeting the other members.

Received this book from Hylton. Will return to enable him to pass on.
This is historical fiction based on true events; the opera The Peony Pavilion and its subsequent banning, anorexia in young Chinese girls as the only means of control in a paternalistic culture,the women writers of the time and the link to all this as well as the Chinese belief in the afterlife from the perspective of a hungary ghost.
Different, not always enjoyable but interesting and insightful

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Returning to Hylton. Thereafter he will release.