Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Several months back our book club read The Good Earth, which told of the hard life of peasants in China in the early 20th century. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See takes place about a century earlier, but despite the better standing of Lily and Snow Flower, their hardships were much the same as the family in The Good Earth.
Lily and Snow Flower are sworn as laotong, an eternal BFF, early in their lives. They understand their roles as women-- from early footbinding, to learning domestic arts, to marriage and serving their husbands and husband's families. While they never question those roles, they find ways to communicate true feelings, happiness, and especially unhappiness through the secret writing nu shu. Just like the peasants in The Good Earth, these girls experience drought, famine, untimely death and illness as well as success through hard work and tradition keeping.
The friendship Lily and Snow Flower shared was poignant, but the descriptions of the accepted footbindings were what really amazed me. Although impossible to change a tradition in one generation or by one woman, I was surprised that the two "sisters" so easily and readily accepted the practice for their own daughters after experiencing such pain and personal loss.
I enjoyed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan-- the story moved swiftly and the characters came to life with plausible jealousies, loves, desires and pain. Netflix rating 3/5.

The Painted Veil

Despite having wanting to see the movie version of this book for months, I really had little idea what the story was about. This was a book club pick, so is not on my list of bookshelf books, although it's there now, since I actually had to buy it, the waiting list at the library was too long.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham would be a comedy of manners, except it is no comedy. In fact, everything that can go wrong, does. Kitty fails to make a good marriage, so marries a suitor who will marry her before her sister's marriage. She takes a lover, who ultimately does not stand up for her and her husband, as payback, takes her to the heart of a cholera epidemic in a Chinese village. Death and destruction abound, but while the book was easy to read (at just 250 pages, it is a two night read), I felt nothing for any of the characters and regarded them all as superficial people. And perhaps that was the intent. The book takes place at the height of British colonialism, and through one of the characters, Maugham makes a point of declaring that the British can live anywhere, and have no connection to their homeland. Each of the characters looks out for his or her own person, without regard for others and their physical location-- whether England, Hong Kong, a small village or the Bahamas, the location is incidental and once the "job is done" the location and people connected with it are useless.

I guess I was hoping for a little more romance, but when I look deeper, the book could be transposed to many situations in present day.

Netflix rating: 3 out of 5 stars.