Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (thoughts) and a Game

I’ve come across this game on several blogs: the blogger posts the first lines of thirteen books, and then y’all get to guess what book it’s from.   I’ve come across it at Annie’s and Poodlerat’s. In my case, I’ll give you a hint: I’ve read each of these books in 2007, and I gave them all five stars.  (If you want a really big extra hint, I’ve added one at the very bottom of the post, after my favourite passages).

1. A little boy was sitting in the corner of a railway carriage looking out at the rain, which was splashing against the windows and blotching downward in an ugly, dirty way.

2. Mr. Jenkins unlocked the bolt and pushed the steel-frame door to K/L unit open with his shoulder.

3. In the morning, the old general spent a considerable time in the wine cellars with his winegrower inspecting two casks of wine that had begun to ferment.  (Embers by Sandor Marai, guessed by Poodlerat.)

4. A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.

5. This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.  (The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, guessed by Jodie)

6. It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies-who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two-that Lizzie Greystock had done very well for herself. (The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope, guessed by Alicia.)

7. …The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. (The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, guessed by Annie.)

8. Baghdad is a city of lives interrupted, its history a story of loss, waiting, and resilience. (Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid, guessed by Alicia.)

9. “My God, how does one write a Biography?”

10. It is night, and our old house by the river is finally quiet.

11. I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. (Out of Africa by Isake Dinesen, guessed by Poodlerat.)

12. I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

13. Tonight, I find myself here in a guest house in the city of Salisbury. (Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, guessed by Annie.)

And now for the review!

I hesitated for a long time before picking up Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I have a gut reaction that really popular books can’t be good, which I need to get over. See is a Chinese American who went on several research trips to obscure parts of China while researching this book. She was inspired to write it after learning about a secret written language developed by women in a rural Chinese region, so the characters in the book seemed (at least to me) more like avatars of the community See was depicting that living, breathing people. In order to depict this female community, Snow Flower tells the story of two young Chinese girls in the 19th century whose lives are bound by a formalised friendship pact. The tone tends to be a bit too self-aware at times, but See gets away with this by having an octogenarian narrator. Mostly, I loved it for the vivid details that let me really envision a time and place that I knew nothing about beforehand. I learned about sewing silk shoes, about foot-binding, about the elaborate courtship and marriages; sometimes, it felt a bit like watching a movie! If you don’t mind a book whose richness is in the setting more than the plot or even characters, pick this one up!

Other Book Bloggers’ Reviews:
1 More Chapter

Favourite Passages
Anyone who ells you that the Yao people never care for their daughters is lying. We may be worthless. We may be raised for another family. But often we are loved and cherished, despite our natal families’ best efforts not to have feelings for us. (96)If we provided her with a good flower tower, she would have a place to wander in and entertain herself. If she were happy, Snow Flower and I decided to make our own. We envisioned a tower of many levels, like a seven-tiered pagoda. We put a pair of foo dogs at the entrance. Inside, we painted poems on the walls in our secret writing. We made one level for dancing, another for floating. We made a sleeping room with stars and the moon painted on the ceiling. On another level, we made a women’s chamger, with lattice windows done in intricate paper cutouts that provided views in every direction. We made a sleeping room with stars and the moon painted on the ceiling. We constructed a table on which we laid out our favorite threads, some ink, paper, and a brush, so Beautiful Moon might embroider or write letters in nu shu to her new ghost friends. We made servants and entertainers out of twisted colored paper and set them about the tower so that every level would provide company, distraction, and amusements. (98)All of it was women’s work-the very work that men think is merely decorative-and it was being used to change the lives of the women themselves. (127)“She loved you as a laotaong should for everything that you were and everything you were not,” Plum Blossom concluded. “But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men’s rules.” (241-2)

Need an extra hint for identifying the opening lines?  Here are the authors of the ones left, in no particular order: Wilkie Collins, Hermione Lee, Haruki Murakmi, Jasper Fforde, Mark Salzman, Baroness Orczy, Kazuo Ishiguro, L.M. Boston, Susan Gardner.  That should make it a bit easier!