I absolutely adored this book! It is a period piece set in 19th Century China about two young ladies who are bound by a traditional oath to be 'old sames' or lifetime best friends. The novel traces their lives through love, fortune, and misery, explaining in delicate detail the subtleties of Chinese culture at the time.

Lovely and deep, this novel contains passages that simply take one's breath away. Highly recommended!

Being thousands of miles away from my closest female friends, I sometimes forget just how much I love them, and what it's like to share an intensely close friendship with another woman. "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" resurfaced those feelings for me, and reminded me of the complexity of human relationships.

At the beginning of the novel, I found myself immediately immersed in Lily's world. I didn't want to put the book down. I thought the author did a wonderful job weaving in descriptions of the setting/characters with the plot, without breaking the flow of reading just to create a picture of 19th century China. (Perhaps I had an advantage over other readers, having been to Hunan before, but I'm not sure.)

Around the middle of the book, I found myself wishing that the author hadn't accelerated the plot so much and had instead taken some extra pages to elaborate on the events that occurred. I suppose I enjoyed the book so much, that I wanted to be able to delve into the characters' lives just that much more.

Before I knew it, I had reached the last 50 pages of the book. Given the brevity of the novel, I have to say that I was surprised at how believable the intensely emotional closing was.

I loved "Memoirs of a Geisha" for its aesthetic beauty, but the "laotong" relationship between Lily and Snow Flower captured the beauty and pain of female friendships in a very powerful way.

Every once in a while after finishing a book I am reluctant to pick up another one. I need to spend a few days thinking and picking apart the book processing new things learned, deciding how it fits in with my world view, admiring prose, and analyzing if I really "believe" the story and accept the author's conclusions. This book had all of that.

New things: nu shu a secret written language of women a thousand years old. And foot binding, I was horribly fascinated and oddly touched. Picturing myself going through this process with my own 7-year-old. Not a chance!!!

World View: Set in the mid-1800's in rural China I was filled with helplessness and horror as I read of among other things arranged marriages, foot binding, death, and abuse. Strangely, I never felt pity. I love a writer that can draw you in to the story so completely that what happens is how life plays out. They write without a plea for sympathy because the point of the novel is not the plot devices or what life was like but the underlying story itself.

Prose: Rice-and-Salt Days: what a perfect description of that time in our lives when so many of us are "just" mothers or "just" women. When our days are consumed with the details of running a home. Clean, cook, repeat... And the nu shu itself...a language based on phoenetics to be always read in texture, context and shades of meaning. How relevant this simple lesson in the beginning of the book was to the story that played out.

Analyzing: I did believe this story and all of it's layers. I have experienced a little the satisfying, healing and happiness to be found in our relationships with other women. I do believe that we have influence on the circumstances around us, even when we start out holding none of the power. And I believe in love and it's power to shape and direct our lives.

I actually wavered between giving this book a rating of 3 or 4 stars. This is not because Lisa See was unable to portray the life in this feudal Chinese society well, because much of this was vivid and interesting. The oppression of women, including the horrors of footbinding, isolation and servitude to men and one's in-laws were all clearly and often dismayingly illustrated.

One problem with this novel is how much better the tale could have been related if written in the third person, rather than the use of Lily as narrator. After learning throughout this book that she was a sensitive, caring, pledged lifelong friend; she becomes a cruel,selfish and judgemental harridan to Snow Flower. These very factors were so antithetical to what was supposed to have been developed between these two women and what they had always professed would be their relationship, that it was difficult to continue the reading with the same attitude of enjoyment and appreciation. I often found that See did not work hard enough to develop either her plot lines or her characters. She often glossed over some segments, seemingly in order to reach her next period of time.

Despite these criticisms, I found this book often compelling with a level of anticipation for the reader.

uuughughghghghg ugh ugh ugh.

i can't read about foot binding anymore. it literally makes me sick to my stomach. this is mostly due to a 15 minute video displayed twice every hour in a small missionary museum in new mexico.

the sole purpose of this museum, for reasons i still can't
explain, was to display unusual world practices encountered by missionaries around the globe, throughout history. my parents, wishing to enliven and culture my young and spongelike brain, (and also having nothing else to entertain me with as the entire state of new mexico is boring as all get out to drive through and so damn hot you can't even sit on the grass at the rest stops) set me free in this twisted little house for 2 hours when i was eight.

it was full of fun things, like pictures of kayan woman proudly displaying their neck rings, and the perfume pouches french royalty wore to ward off fleas and lice, and examples of poisoned darts that papa new guinea tribes used to hunt down white explorers in the 1700's... yay!

And it also had this little dark room, with cute little chairs just my size, and teensy little brocade shoes just outside the entrance. and everybody loves teensy shoes, people. do you blame me for being fascinated?

the guy in the video, however, scary. he was fat, balding, and holding a little model of a foot's skeleton just the size of my own. he used this to show how a woman's foot would be wrapped in anceint china, to press the ball of the foot towards the heel. and then he actually pressed. slowly. until the bones snapped and the ball and heel were touching.

and then someone in the production process must have decided this wasn't realistic enough, so they had this cute little asian-girl actress come out and demonstrate, through blurry lens shots and muted screams, what this procedure might have felt like. when they found me later i was hypnotized, sitting with my feet tucked under my butt clutching the toes of my tennis shoes.

now, like many of you goodreads devotees, i had an overactive imagination as a child. i spent a good deal of time after that experience imaging what i would do if i grew up in that time period. you know, how i would escape. because of course i had to escape. can you imagine what that would feel like? but people would find me! and hold me down! or the emperor would catch me and chop off my head! there was no escape! lots of girls would have to do it! or did it! augh! it must have been HORRIBLE for them! HORRIBLE! AUGHHH!

...consequently, i decided that to make myself feel better about the 50 majillion little asian girls a long time ago, i would just pretend that foot binding never happened. just, like, stick to american girl novels and the occasional "dear america" journal (medieval europe only though) till i was 12. or, you know, longer. and that's worked out pretty good for me, until this book.

ms. see does a pretty amazing job resurrecting all those horribly emphatic feelings. her characters are fleshed out so well that it's hard not to see and feel through them. and even though the story is beautiful, there's a lot of history in there to see and feel. This is not like "Sex and the Zhejiang Province", or those awesome soap operas out of Shanghai recently where everybody runs around an ancient chinese palace set waving fans and giggling and pouring tea and crying and having babies and being banished and what not.

Every main character in "Snow Flower" pretty much gets crapped upon continuously throughout their lives until they get too old to negotiate their way higher on the social food chain and just sit back and let their grandkids take care of them. Or you know, die. (NOT A SPOILER! Don't even try.)

which is basically awesome. definitely my kind of realistic, historical novel. i'm just warning everybody... don't wiki it. don't. you don't need to see the x-rays. because they're gonna stick with you, in tiny little grotesque foot nightmares. and you'll be stuck, for the rest of the book, pretending foot binding means everyone got to wear pretty tube socks in bright colors.

2010 F.A.B. Bookclub pick # I.❤️. F.A.B.

While I found the historic aspects of the book fascinating, it was a fairly depressing read. I was holding onto hope that it would become uplifting at some point. There is no happiness in this book. I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone. It wasn't bad, but It wasn't amazing either.

This is the fascinating story bringing you to 19th century China. Lily is 80 years old and is reflecting on her life in this story.
Lily and Snowflower are pared together and become laotong. They do everything together, even the most horrific procedure of foot binding. Lily and Snowflower endure the pain and the hardship together. This is of one of many pains and tribulations they experience together, even though they both marry and live apart they still are laotong.
This is the compelling tale of China 19th century customs. Lisa See transports you back to a time where you can really feel the atmosphere of China at that time. You learn of the secret language that women learn to send each other messages.
It is at times a sad story as the reader relives Lily and Snowflower’s life.
This is the story of unconditional love and friendship. Everyone should read this book.

I have a whole life to tell; I have nothing left to lose and few to offend.

Three quarters of this book was fascinating. An enthralling glimpse of a way of life in China that was beyond harsh. I was utterly enthralled to read about the friendship between Snow Flower and Lily.

The last quarter takes a surprisingly dark twist, and it threw me a bit. There are some rather dramatic events that felt a bit out of place, and ultimately I didn't quite understand Lily's extreme behaviour.

That said, the ending brought it somewhat nicely back together.

The writing is very beautiful, and I would definitely recommend reading this unique, fictional historical novel.

En todos sus mensajes hablaba de pájaros, de volar, de un mundo lejano. Ya entonces se rebelaba contra lo que se le ofrecía. Yo quería agarrarme a sus alas y elevarme, por muy intimidada que me sintiera.

I saw the movie years ago and just ordered the blu ray actually.

You don't get as much detail in the movie of the foot binding as you do in the book. This is a horrific thing done to these children. Breaking their little toes and curling them into these tiny little things so you can find a better marriage! What is wrong with people? I know there are a lot of different things done in different cultures but I don't care. Moving on!

The story is of the special bond between two little girls that are paired together as laotong, which means, "old same." They are like sisters and have a stronger connection than most. This is the story of Lily and Snow Flower from childhood through death. All of the trials they had to go through in life together and apart after marriage. They are so lucky to have a bond like that, especially when they have to live life being called worthless unless they can have good feet and find a good husband.

The story has some good things in it, but most is just so sad reading about this kind of culture. I still very much loved it. It's one that will really get to you.

www.melissa413readsalot.blogspot.com

Read and reviewed in 2008. Review updated in 2020 - without rereading the book - to focus on "secret" languages.

This is a first person tale of a Chinese girl in mid the 19th century. It's a poignant story that quietly teaches a lot about the culture of the time and place: poverty, footbinding, marriage, and particularly sisterhood/laotong - a legalistic long-term exclusive "old-same" friendship with another girl.


Image: A secret fan, from the BBC article (link below).

I enjoyed more as it progressed and you see different sides to the main characters.

Nǚshū - the secret language of women

This book was my introduction to Nǚshū, a script women used to support each other, especially in the early days after marriage.

I've occasionally read about Nǚshū since then, and again just now (October 2020) in a Language Log post, and the somewhat romanticised BBC article it links to.

The apparent contradiction that annoyed me a dozen years ago (that an "illiterate" mother writes something for her grandmother's funeral only 15 pages later) is a mere misunderstanding: many of the women who learned Nǚshū were illiterate - in regular Chinese characters. But they were not - obviously - illiterate in Nǚshū.

I think Nǚshū is even more aesthetically pleasing than normal Chinese calligraphy, and both articles are worth reading (click the links in the paragraph above).


Image: Nǚshū, from the Language Log article (link above).

Other gendered languages?

Sociologists observe differences in the spoken, written, and body language of men and women (John Gray probably mentions it at exaggerated length in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus). The difference is that it's a spectrum of the same language: men, women, and anyone in between are, to some extent, aware of these differences.

I do wonder how "secret" Nǚshū really was. I assume some men knew of its existence, and probably a few learned it. How much might that dilute its usefulness? I've wondered the same about the police's Ask for Angela scheme: a discreet phrase customers can say to bar staff if they feel threatened. A nice idea, but it's widely advertised. Abusers will know of it.

There's irony in the fact that "Today, much of what we know about Nüshu is due to the work of male researcher" (BBC article).

I listened to this book on audio and it was a lovely book, beautifully read. It's so hard to believe the author didn't live, eat and breathe in 19th century China, so perfectly drawn is the setting and the characters. A touching story of 19th century women that can resonate easily with women today.