In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
This is a book club book. And I mean that in an only mildly derogatory sense of the phrase. Book club books are, well, like pornography, hard to describe, but you know 'em when you see 'em. They're generally fiction, about people and relationships rather than say, thrillers or mysteries. Often, women will be the main character(s), and uh, the more I try to pin these types of books down, the more likely I am to rile up either (a) book group members, or (b) the authors of these types of books. I don't want to imply that any single book group is like this, but I just want to classify a certain set of books and when I read this set of books I automatically think, "book group book". I hope you know what I mean. It's not meant to be a slur on quality, but probably it's more about accessibility, and the way in which the book often gives people things to think about, but does it sort of non-aggressively, so that the members of your book group don't wind up screaming at each other over chips 'n' dip.
It's probably becoming very apparent that I have never actually been part of a book group, but I hear that stereotyping based off of representations of things in the media is very popular these days. For my part, I would rather have a book group for really difficult books, like Joyce's Ulysses, which I totally read without understanding a single thing that was going on, although it did not ruin my enjoyment of the book AT ALL. And I mean that in the sense that I enjoyed it muchly.
Anyhoo. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is not, despite the title, a teen mystery à la Nancy Drew. I know, so misleading! It begins with the 80 year old Lily telling us that she is filled with guilt, regret, shame over something that happened with her "old same" Snow Flower, before winding us all the way back to the beginning of the tale. It starts with Lily's footbinding, as a matchmaker "discovers" that Lily's feet are perfectly proportioned to become the smallest (and thus, most beautiful) lotus feet in the area. Since Lily's fortunes are now on the rise, without a single thing being done, she's also considered for the prestigious position of laotong with another girl.
And just as a side note, See's done a really great job explaining all this background and cultural placement without reading like a very dry history book. It's entirely focused on the women's inner world so the need to get the details right about things like the placement of the women's room and who sleeps in it, and how the rituals of matchmaking proceed is very important. Not only that, but these types of details are the ones most often forgotten over the years as historians record the big earthshaking events, but rarely the day-to-day activities of women. So it's a pleasure to get this peek into Lily's world, even if I myself could have read even more about the minutiae of Lily's life. See strikes a nice balance between simply relaying information and storytelling.
Anyhow, Lily is found a candidate for laotong - Snow Flower - a girl who fits the signs from a larger, more prosperous family and village. The girls bind themselves together, promising to never let another come between them, and settle in for a life-long friendship. Okay, now SPOILERY SPOILERS!
The promise lasts about as long as it takes Lily to realize that Snow Flower has been lying to her for the past six or so years, and is actually the daughter of a dedicated opium smoker who has ruined her family's fortunes. Lily is devastated to find out (at her wedding) that Snow Flower is really hitching her wagon to Lily's rising star rather than the reverse. This part was a little tricky for me - the full secret and reveal came as a surprise to me, even though there were hints all throughout (but as you know I'm very slow to pick up on hints), so it was nice that just when you thought Snow Flower was already at her lowest low point, you find out some other horribly sad fact about her life and future. Lily, on the other hand, is a little snot. It's not completely unexpected, and it's true that Lily might deserve to feel betrayed, but it's the first crack in their friendship, and it's aggravating to see Lily, who had previously thought that Snow Flower was head and shoulders above her but welcoming her anyhow, not really be so willing to extend the same courtesy to Snow Flower. It's our first glimpse at the Lady that Lily becomes - righteous but cold.
To Lily's credit though, the two young women stay close for the next several years - or at least, as close as they can be given that Lily is married to the head honcho and Snow Flower is married to local unclean butcher, and both of them have mothers-in-law from hell. They go through a couple of year like that, havin' babies (or miscarryin', on Snow Flower's part) and visiting every so often, until the Taiping revolution, in which millions and millions of people were slaughtered. Lily is caught out at Snow Flower's house when this happens, so instead of leaving with her family, she has to climb a mountain with Snow Flower and her abusive husband and small children in the dead of winter. Once up there, Lily does her best to keep the whole family alive, by using her position as Lady to get more food for Snow Flower's scrawny firstborn son, but things sour after Snow Flower's second, heartier son dies, and her husband beats her, buries her son without her, and makes her miscarry another child. Lily compounds Snow Flower's misery by high-and-mightily telling her that her husband is a terrible person and Snow Flower should get over it by being the best wife she can be and having another child right away. What a gem of a friend!
This is really when things get sad: Snow Flower's fortunes, which never were high to begin with, fall even further as she gets beaten regularly and falls swiftly into depression, while Lily, who never had much in the way of difficulties, except possibly a loveless relationship with her husband, gets a moment of joyful reunion with him after they make it back down the mountain. It's sad because you can see what's coming, even though Lily can't: her constant nagging and nitpicking at Snow Flower are the only way she can care for Snow Flower - she can't relate to her, she can't sympathize with her, because their lives are so different now. In Lily's mind, following the rules means a happy life, since that's always worked for her, but Lily doesn't realize how lucky she is, and how justice should be tempered with mercy. So Snow Flower tells Lily that she needs another support group and Lily blackballs the shit out of her, ruining her status in the town.
Eventually Lily does realize where she went wrong, and repents, but it's still a tragedy. The book is supposed to be about this deep friendship, but I honestly think Lily stops being a real friend to Snow Flower the moment she realizes that Snow Flower isn't the high-falutin' person Lily thought she was when she was 7, which is more the matchmaker's fault than Snow Flower's. Lily's life isn't the easiest either, but she has so much when Snow Flower has so little, and Lily always seems very immature throughout - very much the angry teenager who stomps through the house and slams the door when you won't let her stay out until 11 pm.
It's a very compelling book, and I gobbled it right up, and like I said earlier, the setting and details are well done. It was really interesting to read about a time in which women basically did not go outdoors, ever, and hardly walked, and the culture which built up around footbinding (which obviously creates a lot of societal stratification, as seen in SFatSF). It's true that the women's lives might seem limited in scope, but See's managed to bring out the deep emotions and joys and sorrows that women of the time and place experienced. What's sad is that even female friendship, which is possibly the one real comfort these women got, was bound by these rules and regulations, and in many cases limited to their girlhood.
I do feel like the system that created the laotongs was the same that led, in part, to its destruction. And the book is a big warning on the perils of miscommunication. I know this review is more of a synopsis than my usual, but I will say that I enjoyed it very much, even if it was bound by the limitations of the "book club" type.
No comments:
Post a Comment