A language kept a secret for a thousand years forms the backdrop for an unforgettable novel of two Chinese women whose friendship and love sustains them through their lives.
This absorbing novel – with a storyline unlike anything Lisa See has written before – takes place in 19th century China when girls had their feet bound, then spent the rest of their lives in seclusion with only a single window from which to see. Illiterate and isolated, they were not expected to think, be creative, or have emotions. But in one remote county, women developed their own secret code, nu shu – "women's writing" – the only gender-based written language to have been found in the world. Some girls were paired as "old-sames" in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their windows to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
An old woman tells of her relationship with her "old-same," their arranged marriages, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood—until a terrible misunderstanding written on their secret fan threatens to tear them apart. With the detail and emotional resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha , Snow Flower and the Secret Fan delves into one of the most mysterious and treasured relationships of all time—female friendship.
4 comments:
Sorry I missed the get together and discussion on Sunday night - I always enjoy it. Now, I feel like I'm left hanging with Edgar! I'll have to join an online discussion group :)
Looking forward to the new novel choice - thanks for everything, Patty!
Hi Teresa,
Missed you too! Has Rachel mentioned the Edgar-Hamlet connection to you?
It makes me go, Hmmmm.
Hi,
After hearing that even the "syringe" episode was in Hamlet, I found the following a bit odd...
DW: I think of this novel is as a story haunted by another story—two stories in fact. The other being the Mowgli stories from Kipling. I certainly don’t consider Edgar a “retelling” of Hamlet — that implies a degree of adherence to plot structure and dramatis personae that I continually tried to subvert.
There were certain elements I knew I wanted, of course. For example, I knew from the beginning that Edgar’s story was told in five acts. A very formal structure for a novel. I understood that the Sawtelle dogs were Edgar’s Denmark. I also knew that I wanted to draw on some of Shakespeare’s other plays, snatching bits like the witches in MacBeth, or the blindness in Lear. In almost all other ways, however, I let the story wander without any requirement to ever coincide with Hamlet, and in fact mostly it doesn’t. The imperative was for Edgar’s present story to be compelling, everything else was a distant second.
Curiously, no one ever asks about the connection to Kipling’s The Jungle Book, even though it is explicitly referenced in the text. (Hamlet never is—with the single exception of the phrase “Remember me.”) If we could ask Edgar what story most closely parallels his life, he’d point to Mowgli in an instant.
I hope Oprah doesn't eat him alive at some point - only because of his denial and this being an Oprah choice....remember what she did to the 'million pieces' author?
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