Review: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Recently, I joined PaperbackSwap, which I'm sorry I never discovered before!  The premise is easy -- you post books online that you don't mind "swapping" (not getting back).  Someone requests one of your books, you pay the shipping and you send that book out.  For every book you swap, you get 1 credit towards a book of your choice.  You choose a book, that person pays for the shipping -- free book for you!  I've traded three of my books so far, and I've requested three.  The first book I requested was Lisa See's story of 19th-centure China, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

The protagonist, Lily, is a young girl of seven when the village matchmaker comes to her parents with a unique proposal.  As a girl, Lily is worthless to her family, and only precious to her in-laws if she produces sons.  She is not expected to find constant companionship in anyone, be it parents, children, or in-laws -- until the matchmaker suggest pairing her with a laotong ("old same"), a girl who is her same age, to be bound to her as her best friend for life.  The laotong is the titular Snow Flower, a girl from a proud and highly-ranked family, and the two girls find intimate love in each other immediately.  They communicate by sending each other messages on a fan, in the secret language of nu shu, known only to Chinese women.  Over the years, tragedy and happenstance threaten to divide the girls, but nothing can come between them -- except a terrible misunderstanding that threatens the bonds of their eternal friendship.

I have to note: this is one of the saddest, harshest books I have ever read.  If you have read Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, you are probably already familiar with the philosophies and the attitudes displayed in this book -- particularly the cult of women as worthless slaves.  Snow Flower herself reminded me several times of O-lan, the long-suffering wife of a Chinese farmer from The Good Earth.  But nothing could have prepared me for the second chapter and the graphic, brutal description of the Chinese custom of footbinding.  It made me cringe to read it, almost made me sick to my stomach, and when I reread Snow Flower, I will most likely be skipping that chapter.  Nevertheless, it is very crucial to understanding the position that Lily, Snow Flower, and the other women in China were put in at that time -- for, as Lily explains, if they did not bind their feet, they were worthless and unmarriageable.

The writing style is very beautiful, and the characters are as interesting as they are intricate.  I wish that the book had been written in the third person, rather than told from Lily's point of view.  It would have been interesting and perhaps more fulfilling to know what Snow Flower was thinking throughout the novel, understand her thoughts, see the world unfold through her eyes.  Unfortunately, with the restrictions caused by first person POV, we don't understand much of what Snow Flower is thinking, and this story of a beautiful female friendship gone awry is a little too one-sided.  Still, a beautiful, though extremely sad, novel.

Rating: *** and 1/2