Tag: Review

It is the mid 1930’s in Shanghai and May and Pearl are beautiful, sophisticated, and well educated.  When their father gambles away all the family owns, they are on the verge of losing everything.  In order to save their home, May and Pearl’s father arranges for his daughters to be married to two brothers who live in Los Angeles and within a few days of making this decision the girls are shocked, horrified… and married.
When the girls went on the boat to be delivered to their new home in the states, they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months along with many other women trying to get to the US.  It is as thought the lives they once knew had crumbled right before their eyes.  When May discovers she is pregnant the girls make a pact that no one can ever EVER know.

Once in the states they find that life is not as they had been told, their father in law is not the rich man that he portrayed himself to be in Shanghai.  Instead he is close to poverty, relying on what his sons, and now his daughter in laws can provide him by working and giving him the money.  Together May and Pearl learn to survive in a new world, in new ways.

My first experience with Lisa See was Snowflower and The Secret Fan.  I devoured that book and knew I wanted to read more of her work.  That time has come with Shanghai Girls which has turned out not only to be an incredible fiction experience. 

What at first I thought was going to be mainly about their new lives and how they adjusted to this new life (much like A Buddha In The Attic), I was surprised to find that Lisa See winds a much deeper story within the story and when I caught on to what she was doing, I was really thrilled.  As this book is about two sisters from Shanghai and their lives, it is really about the sisters Pearl and May.  While Pearl narrates what she sees and how things are, you get a very strong feeling of who they are.  Here in lies the beauty of Lisa See’s writing.

I also learned a few things I did not know before.

Like what?

Have you ever heard of paper sons?  It really is a fascinating (and sad) topic of how during the Chinese Exclusion Act (read more about that here on Wikepedia) immigration to the US was restricted.  That being told, false papers were being drawn up where US citizens would claim children and even adults  as their own and these papers could create access to the states for these people.  The people would then live with the American families under their US family name to ensure they were not found out, forever giving up their true ancestors and name.  Thus the term paper sons came to be as they were truly only sons on paper. 

The experience the girls, May and Pearl have on the boat the states is heart wrenching.  Not only as I listened to this on audio, but also as I suspect this is actually what happened when women traveled alone to get to the states on these boats.  They were raped repeatedly.  They were beaten and starved. 

One moment that sticks out for me is later in the book May refers to some women she sees as FOB’s.  I kept wondering if she was swearing at them, only soon to figure out that FOB meant “fresh off the boat”.  LOL…. I am going to use that some day in a sentence…. 😀

Shanghai Girls is a look into two girls lives from their youth as beautiful girls to their experiences lives, marriages, and more in the United States.  Lisa See does a wonderful job of making this book feel more fact than fiction.

Check out a few other reviews from awesome bloggers:

Devourer Of Books

She Is Too Fond Of Books

Books On The Brain

Always With A Book

Amazon Rating

Goodreads Review

Borrowed from my local library

 

How does one describe The Buddha In The Attic?  It is a narration of the collected voices of young women brought over from Japan to San Fransisco as brides nearly a century ago. 

The Buddha In The Attic traces their lives as they travel by boat (I wonder what it will be like to live in the states?), meet their husbands (he is not rich as I was believed he would be!), face uncertain futures (what will become of us?), becoming new wives (what does he expect of me?), working the fields (other men will not leave us alone), mastering a new language (do I pretend still not to understand?), child birth (what if my child is born under the wrong sign?) and eventually to war.

It really is hard to explain The Buddha In The Attic, which is really why prior to listening to this on audio… I still did not fully get what it was about even by the synopsis.  What I did know:

1.  The title made me want to know more

2.  The cover led me to think of things hiding, secrets of the unknown…

So here I am after listening to this short audio book (4 cd’s) and now kind of basking in the experience. 

The Buddha in the Attic as narrated by Samantha Quan and Carrington MacDuffie is told as a collective “we” and never an “I”.  There is no sole character.  In 8 chapters a different aspect of Japanese immigrant life is unfolded for us to view in the raw:

“Home was a bed of straw in John Lyman’s barn alongside his prize horses and cows. Home was a corner of the washhouse at Stockton’s Cannery Ranch. Home was a bunk in a rusty boxcar in Lompoc. Home was an old chicken coop in Willows that the Chinese had lived in before us. Home was a flea-ridden mattress in a corner of a packing shed in Dixon. Home was a bed of hay atop three apple crates beneath an apple tree.”

and so on… each chapter reading out like that, a description of their life in this new world and then told in 20 or more different ways.  Yes, at first it was a little hard to follow, my bookish mind kept waiting for the story, but the sharing of information, IS the story. And as this went on, from having children, to losing children, to what they did with the children, and so on….

I found a rhythm. 

It is safe to say this is poetry.

It is raw.  It is real.  At times it is painful.  At times it will make you mad. In the end… I find that I am better for having listened to it and I an appreciate the collective whole. 

No I would not seek out this style of writing, but a sampling of it like I just had is good.  I am glad I listened to it over reading it.  The narration is beautiful, the words, and the undertones, I thought were brilliantly read. 

Side note:  It is interesting that I am also listening to Shanghai Girls at this time and the stories and time frames are similar.

Here are a few other reviews from great bloggers:

nomadreader

Fizzy Thoughts

Take Me Away Reading

Reading On A Rainy Day

Amazon Rating

Goodreads Review

Borrowed from my library!

The Andreas sisters were raised on books – their family motto might as well be, ‘There’s no problem a library card can’t solve.’  (this line alone made me want to read this one!)

Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard’s most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind – As You Like It), Bean (Bianca – The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia – King Lear), but they have inherited those characters’ failures along with their strengths.

Now the three sisters have returned home to the small college town in Barnwell Ohio where they grew up – under the guise on their mothers battle with cancer… but also because their lives are a mess that even Shakespeare would be stumped over.  .

Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she’s thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it’s finally time for her to grow up.

The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

Weird Sisters.  I love the title.  It makes me think of witches or women with magical powers.  I have no idea why. 

I had seen a lot about this book in past months, gloriously showing up on blog after blog making me curious about it.  When it showed up on audible.com for 4.95 I pulled the trigger (or the credit card) and bought the book.

Hmmmm….

You get the gist of the story in the synopsis.  Yet for some reason I connected with none of the characters.  It basically went on and on about the sisters, their lives, the mom (who is ill) and the dad who oddly quotes Shakespeare at random times in the book and me, not knowing much Shakespeare (ok… knowing ANY Shakespeare at all) is left scratching my head and thinking, “wha…?”

I could not put my finger on what I was not finding appealing about the book until the very end.  Seriously I was starting to think I was ruined for books forever as I recently had a similar experience with Carry The One (which is also about family living through tragedy… or something…).  Neither book (IMO) have a strong plot.

What do you mean Sheila?  Of course there is a plot!

Yes, both books do have a plot…. but it is one that the cards are shown in the early pages of the book and then…. nothing, nothing really big happens… like nothing carries the story.  I am hoping this makes sense but in Weird Sisters (and in Carry the One for that matter) the books are just about every day family life, what they are doing, eating, saying,….  day to day life.  I am basically, as the reader, along for the ride.

I have given a lot of thought to this as now in just a matter of two weeks I have stumbled on to this twice in my reading.  I guess, and maybe its just me… but I like more plot, more happenings, more emotion….

and I just did not feel it.

Does the book have its moments?

I think so, but here is the clincher.  Usually in a book or audio as I am going along, I pick up on something I love about the book or something that made me want to know more and  I can not wait to chat with you all about that in the review…. Yet, today, as I type this… I am clinging to nothing.  No point of the book is standing out to me, and that right there is why I leave this book (audio) with no connections.

I purchased this audio book on audible.com

It started with a wedding.  And then there was a reception.  There was a lot of drinking, and a lot of drugs.  In hindsight, it probably was not the best idea they had ever had to drive that night in a drunken drug induced haze but they did.

And that is when they hit the girl.

For Carmen, Alice, and Nick, the accident is carried with them wherever they go, far into the future.  The girl shows up in Alice’s paintings in the gallery…. a girl, wearing the same clothes she wore that fateful night…. a girl who Alice can not find closure for.  Casey has memories of the girl she never knew and Nick all these years later still tries to hide inside a bottle.

How… in the flash of a wrong choice, that alters lives forever… HOW do you move on with out carrying the one?

When I first read the synopsis of Carry The One I could not wait to get my hands on it.  A tragedy… an accident… and how a family moves on from something so terrible, so senseless, so their fault….

and so I listened to this on audio and…

let’s just say Carry The One was not what I had thought it would be.  I was expecting a deeply involved novel that did carry the victim throughout the pages.  That was not the case.  In fact, the book is really more about the three siblings, Alice, Carmen, and Nick… and their lives.  Alice paints and searches for love, but that is no different from what was happening prior to the accident.  Carmen’s choices may have an underlying hint of the accident and a need for closure, but mostly she is just doing life, and Nick… well Nick was in trouble before the accident with his drug use and alcohol abuse and that remains the same throughout the book.

I hate to use the word disappointed, but that is what sums this one up for me.  I really thought this book was going to show how one struggles to move on when the unthinkable happens and I really thought the center of the book was going to be about the little girl, Casey.  To me, it was just a book about the lives of three people and day after day how they tried to get it right.  The girl, is not mentioned much, but occasionally, yes.

Maybe I set myself up for failure on this one by having an entirely different idea of how this would play out.  I wanted to like this, shoot… I wanted to love this. 

I did not.

There are some interesting reviews going around about this book.  Quite a few loved it.  I think a few more found it an average read.  Be sure to check out other opinions on Carry The One and if you have read this, please let me know in the comments and I will be happy to link up your review to mine.

Amazon Rating

Goodreads Review

 

 

Elizabeth, a young widow of extraordinary beauty catches the eye of the “To Be Crowned” King Edward.  When he tries to seduce her Elizabeth holds strong for as attracted to Edward as she is, she does not want to bring shame onto her family.  Yet Edward can think of no other woman than Elizabeth so he marries her in secret to buy his time as to when he can announce this marriage to an ordinary girl, not one of royalty as his hand was promised….

fact mixes with fiction as the story unfolds of Elizabeth’s two sons and the mystery that surrounds them and the Tower of London to this day as an unsolved mystery, lost to the winds… and the sea.

SO…. is it good to be King?  Apparently.  King Edward is constantly off in battle, hanging with the guys, and as time goes on women a plenty on the side. 

AND if you ever thought to be a Queen would be sitting in the lap of luxury – spend a little time with this book.  Elizabeth is constantly defending her household, at times sent into hiding for her and her children’s safety, and of course putting up with the Kings extra curricular activities.

I was first introduced to Philippa Gregory with The Other Boleyn Girl.  I love love loved that book.  In fact this was the first book our book club read and all agreed on that we enjoyed it very much.  It was Philippa Gregory who first gave me the taste of historical fiction and I liked it.  And I wanted more.

The White Queen was all I had hoped for… not only a fascinating fictional take of the interweaving of the life and times of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, but also Philippa’s magical touch of mixing the non fiction throughout.  As I marveled at all the things that Queen Elizabeth did to ensure her childrens future as royalty… I had to wonder if her own ambitions would not be the death of them all….

Going into this read I was not aware of the true mystery lying within these pages… one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in English history. 

On Amazon this audio is $12.81 currently and well worth it.  The series, entitles The Cousins War continues with The Red Queen, which is about Margaret Beaufort and her founding of the greatest dynasty England has ever known, The Tudors.  Before you groan about this being a trilogy, fear not, each book stands alone wonderfully and there was no cliff hanger at the end of White Queen, although I would like to continue on with these books/audio. 

Highly engaging, Philippa Gregory herself says at the end of this book it is more fact than fiction.

Amazon Rating

Goodreads Review

 

I purchased this audio from audible.com