From Publishers Weekly
In China in the 1830s, three young girls pledge never to be wives or nuns, the conventional paths open to them, but to live independently. McCunn's colorful third novel (after Thousand Pieces of Gold) follows the adventures of Shadow, Rooster and Mei Ju, who meet in a traditional "girls' house," where female adolescents sleep and work together and are trained to become obedient wives. Shadow, the luckiest of the three, comes from a loving family. Under her mother's guidance, she learned to embroider, and her older brother secretly taught her to read, a skill forbidden to women. When Shadow then instructs her friendsAsharp-tongued, rebellious Rooster, whose family is very poor, and Mei Ju, a timid girl with a talent for silk makingAshe changes their way of looking at the world. Together, the three vow to chart their own lives. Setting up house in the village rain shelter, they plait their hair rather than wear wifely buns and learn to bargain with wily peddlers. Though they are ostracized at first, various selfless acts and sacrifices finally win them grudging acceptance. Despite their privations, the example of Yun Yun, the mistreated wife of the most brutal man in the village, reminds them what their fate might have been. Though it's recounted with the artful simplicity of a folktale, the novel is anchored in fact: women in 19th-century China's Pearl River district, dubbed "self-combers" for their work in the silk industry, did struggle to achieve independence, living together in "spinster houses." McCunn does not present the trio's warm sisterhood as utopian; rather, she convincingly details the emotional suffering they experience in challenging custom. A somewhat pat happy ending gives the novel the ring of didactic literature, but McCunn's vivid, intimate portrait of early women's liberation in China is, above all, a good story, lovingly told. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
Pity a peasant girl born in 19th-century China. Although spared footbinding because her labor was a vital contribution to her birth family's and then her in-laws' well-being, she was kept illiterate and sold into an arranged marriage in her teens. McCunn (Thousand Pieces of Gold) contrasts the lot of Yun Yun, who obeys tradition only to suffer horribly at the hands of an abusive husband and in-laws, with that of three young women who pledge spinsterhood, daring to make lives for themselves outside of marriage. At first harassed and shunned for defying their families' expectations, the spinsters, through unflagging pluck and virtuousness, establish themselves in their hometown, inspiring other girls to resist marriage. This detail-rich fiction, based on historical records of marriage-resistance sisterhoods in China's Pearl River Delta, is hampered by its unnuanced characterizations and lack of psychological insight. However, it is a thoughtful reminder that "traditional family values," while providing stable families, usually come at the price of the brutal subjugation of women. Recommended particularly for women's studies collections and libraries serving large Chinese populations.DIna Rimpau, Newark P.L., N.J.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
