From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Set in 17th-century China, See's fifth novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying
The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families. It figures into the plot that generations of young Chinese women, known as the lovesick maidens, became obsessed with
The Peony Pavilion, and, in a
Werther-like passion, many starved themselves to death. See (
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, etc.) offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China (including horrifying foot-binding scenes) and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals. Peony's vibrant voice, perfectly pitched between the novel's historical and passionate depths, carries her story beautifully—in life and afterlife.
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In seventeenth-century China, Peony, a sheltered and obedient young girl, is allowed to see the controversial opera The Peony Pavilion as part of her sixteenth-birthday celebration. During the performance, which takes three evenings to complete, she meets and falls in love with a mysterious young man. Already promised in marriage, she mourns for the love she cannot have, only to discover as she is dying that her stranger is her betrothed, Wu Ren. After her death, the burial rituals are unfinished, and she cannot go to her ancestors. Instead, she haunts her lover and uses Ren's new wife to write commentary on the opera to try to reach him, beginning a long and harrowing journey toward fulfillment and eternal rest. See brings the Chinese culture of the Manchu dynasty to life, using the wedding and burial customs to further the plot. Her novel takes on the feel of ancient writing and rivals The Peony Pavilion in romance and political commentary. But through it all, she manages to make her characters real and sympathetic and the plot twists compelling. Dickie, Elizabeth
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