A quick review of three books

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (5/31/07)

Written by Lisa See, this is really a good book. It's only 253 pages, making the book really nice to hold in your hands, but it contains no unnecessary or frivilous words.

The story is about the lives of two women, Lily and Show Flower, from their girlhood until their deaths, in a 19th century county in China, Hunan.

It's difficult to imagine their lives in today's society except that some remnants remain even in American culture - more so in certain religious communities - so that the importance of women's friendships resonates even today.

Men and women in 19th century China (and elsewhere in the world, although perhaps not so well codified) had strictly prescribed roles in society. During this time, footbinding was still practiced (and, indeed was practiced until the middle of the 20th century), and the results of the footbinding was an important part of determining where the girl ended up in society as she became of marriagable age.

Aside from giving us a glimpse of what life might have been like in 19th century China, especially in Hunan, the lifelong relationship between Lily and Snow Flower is a very important part of this story.

The Year of Pleasures & The Year of Magical Thinking (5/25/07)

I couldn't quite get into The Year of Pleasures, written by Elizabeth Berg, although the subject matter was important - how a woman begins life again after her husband unexpectedly dies.

This story was just too neat, and Bette Nolan's life during the year after her husband died just doesn't ring true to me. Nothing is so easy.

The book might be a good summer read, when one doesn't want to concentrate too much on anything. I would say it ranks very high under a list I would call romantic fiction - no, not romantic as in the sense of romance, but romantic in that it just isn't likely to happen the way the story unfolds.

To read about how one might experience the first year after her husband's death, I recommend Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Joan, in one of her final chapters, says: "I notice that I have lost the skills for ordinary social encounters.... I hear myself trying to make an effort [at having a conversation] and failing.... I notice that I get up from dinner too abruptly." That rings true to me.

There's nothing romantic about loss.