Reading Wednesday
May. 11th, 2016 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Secret of a Thousand Beauties by Mingmei Yip. This is marketed as a romance novel set in 1930s China, but I'd argue that it's actually just straight historical fiction. What "counts" as a romance is a bit of a fraught topic, but I'd say that the plot has to focus on a single romantic relationship; in this case, the main character gets married to four different people and spends more time thinking about her friends and rivals than any of her husbands. So, yeah. Historical fiction.
Spring Swallow is a seventeen-year-old orphan in rural China who is engaged to a dead man. There's a tradition that even ghosts need wives, lest they come back to haunt their families from loneliness. Such a woman will actually go through a wedding ceremony and afterward live with her in-laws; she may even adopt children who bear her husband's name. It's not such a bad deal, particularly if your new in-laws are the richest family in the village, but Spring Swallow resents her lack of choices and runs away on her wedding day to the nearby city of Soochow. There she luckily falls in with a household of other young women, all training to become embroiderers under the guidance of an older woman named Aunt Peony. From the style of embroidery she teaches and other hints about her past, Peony clearly had some connection to the now-gone Imperial Court of the Qing dynasty, but she refuses to answer questions about her own background.
This relatively happy arrangement is short-lived. Spring Swallow meets a young man involved in the revolutionary movement and falls in love, despite her vow to remain celibate while in Peony's household. Meanwhile, the rest of the household is also falling apart due to theft, disease, broken promises, and spies from a group dedicated to restoring the Qing dynasty. After everyone else has literally abandoned the house, leaving her all alone, Spring Swallow ends up as a servant in a nearby store. And then there's a lot more plot twists and adventures before the eventual happy ending.
The setting was interesting, but the writing is exteremly simplistic, almost childish. For example:
"The white bird symbolizes the purity of your and Wang Xing's union. The red symbolizes the virginal blood on your marital bed."
Right now my virginal blood was boiling inside all my arteries. What I'd like to do now was slit that bird's neck so he'd bleed to death and end my bloody nightmare. But unfortunately my nightmare was just about to begin!
Seriously? That's not the quality I expect from an adult novel with mostly strong reviews. There's also quite a few unlikely coincidences whenever Spring Swallow needs help or information, while on the other she repeatedly forgets things she's already learned just so there can be another dramatic reveal.
On the other hand, I did genuinely enjoy the descriptions of the work and art of embroidery. Yip clearly did a ton of research for that part of the book, and I only wish it had taken up more of the book. Ultimately you had about one-fourth of a really interesting story, and three-fourths of a poorly written standard "woman survives numerous difficulties" book. Alas.
What are you currently reading?
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. I'm almost done with this, and really enjoying it, but godDAMN it is brutal. And I feel that I have a high tolerance for fictional pain.
Secret of a Thousand Beauties by Mingmei Yip. This is marketed as a romance novel set in 1930s China, but I'd argue that it's actually just straight historical fiction. What "counts" as a romance is a bit of a fraught topic, but I'd say that the plot has to focus on a single romantic relationship; in this case, the main character gets married to four different people and spends more time thinking about her friends and rivals than any of her husbands. So, yeah. Historical fiction.
Spring Swallow is a seventeen-year-old orphan in rural China who is engaged to a dead man. There's a tradition that even ghosts need wives, lest they come back to haunt their families from loneliness. Such a woman will actually go through a wedding ceremony and afterward live with her in-laws; she may even adopt children who bear her husband's name. It's not such a bad deal, particularly if your new in-laws are the richest family in the village, but Spring Swallow resents her lack of choices and runs away on her wedding day to the nearby city of Soochow. There she luckily falls in with a household of other young women, all training to become embroiderers under the guidance of an older woman named Aunt Peony. From the style of embroidery she teaches and other hints about her past, Peony clearly had some connection to the now-gone Imperial Court of the Qing dynasty, but she refuses to answer questions about her own background.
This relatively happy arrangement is short-lived. Spring Swallow meets a young man involved in the revolutionary movement and falls in love, despite her vow to remain celibate while in Peony's household. Meanwhile, the rest of the household is also falling apart due to theft, disease, broken promises, and spies from a group dedicated to restoring the Qing dynasty. After everyone else has literally abandoned the house, leaving her all alone, Spring Swallow ends up as a servant in a nearby store. And then there's a lot more plot twists and adventures before the eventual happy ending.
The setting was interesting, but the writing is exteremly simplistic, almost childish. For example:
"The white bird symbolizes the purity of your and Wang Xing's union. The red symbolizes the virginal blood on your marital bed."
Right now my virginal blood was boiling inside all my arteries. What I'd like to do now was slit that bird's neck so he'd bleed to death and end my bloody nightmare. But unfortunately my nightmare was just about to begin!
Seriously? That's not the quality I expect from an adult novel with mostly strong reviews. There's also quite a few unlikely coincidences whenever Spring Swallow needs help or information, while on the other she repeatedly forgets things she's already learned just so there can be another dramatic reveal.
On the other hand, I did genuinely enjoy the descriptions of the work and art of embroidery. Yip clearly did a ton of research for that part of the book, and I only wish it had taken up more of the book. Ultimately you had about one-fourth of a really interesting story, and three-fourths of a poorly written standard "woman survives numerous difficulties" book. Alas.
What are you currently reading?
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. I'm almost done with this, and really enjoying it, but godDAMN it is brutal. And I feel that I have a high tolerance for fictional pain.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-12 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-12 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 09:17 pm (UTC)Sometimes I genuinely enjoy discovering that a purported Serious Book for Adult Markets is riddled with exclamation points and nightmares that are about to begin! And of course sometimes the exclamation is genuinely effective, though that seems not to be the case here.
(now I childishly want to describe all the books I am currently reading in terms of nightmares that are just about to begin! The Communists want Lila to help them organize the sausage factory workers, but their nightmare is just about to begin! Marcel Proust thinks he's found love in the shady bike paths of Balbec, but his nightmare is just about to begin!)
Sorry, I'll stop now
unlike my nightmareno subject
Date: 2016-05-20 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 09:34 pm (UTC)