I tried to read it. It was so non-compelling, who were these little mice of women, what were they up to, why should I care? MAKE ME CARE. The plot didn't, the characters didn't and so I couldn't get past about page 50. My mind kept drifting off and by the time I was conscious of reading again I wouldn't know what had happened so I had to reread it again and again up unto the fourth rereading of the same pages. (Exactly the same experience I had with Rushdie's Satanic Verses). So I gave up.

I tho More...

My grandmother used to say that my big feet meant I had a “good foundation”. I’d stare longingly at her size-six feet when she said this and curse my genetic inheritance from elsewhere in the family tree. Then I had an ex-boyfriend make the infuriating statement that rich women have small feet. I pointed out that his celebrity crush, Paris Hilton (yeah, another reason I dumped him) has huge size-eleven feet. My teenage-self took a lot of comfort in the fact that foot size is pre-ordained and unc More...

Wow. I just finished this book and wanted to come write about it immediately so I don't forget how it made me feel. First off, the language is beautiful and so fitting for the context. The two girls--Snow Flower and Lily--have a friendship that is beautiful and is fun to pick out little pieces from my own childhood/current friendships that I recognize and adore.

My next thoughts are not necessarily critiques of the book, but of the way the Chinese thought: I had a real problem with hearing over More...

I had high hopes for this book, but ended up feeling deflated and disappointed. Two aspects of the book were interesting: descriptions of the practice of Chinese footbinding, and an exploration of 'nu shu,' the written language Chinese women developed to communicate exclusively with each other.

Unfortunately, the book also has two major problems: a boring story, and the use of cheap gimmicks instead of complex characterization.

The story deals with two girls who are matched as 'old sames,' sort More...

An Excellent Choice for Book Clubs

I had a hard time putting down this book and felt utterly transported to a village in the Hunan province in central south China during the early to mid-nineteenth century. The narrator, 80-year-old Lily, who refers to herself as one who has "yet to die," tells the story of her life. She has outlived her family members and relates the story of her formative years--and her relationship with another woman, Snow Flower. This well written tale is related with clarity More...

I ended up enjoying this book because it was so beautifully written and it took me deep into a world so unlike my own; thank goodness for that! This story takes place in China’s Hunan Province in the 1800s and is more about the inner lives of the women than the men.

I had a complete misconception of what foot binding entailed. It’s completely different, and so much more brutal a practice than I ever could have imagined. There were also many examples given of what I consider other horrendous cust More...

My book club was more interested in talking about their trips to China than See's book. So I am happy for Good Reads. While I found the writing journalistic: that is competent, extremely well researched, fast paced, page-turning, I cannot truly say it was well written. No phrase or passage noteworthy for its beauty or addition to literature. I was fascinated, however, by the potential for beautiful prose but lists just don't do that for me. The publisher's missed an opportunity to replicate the More...

I actually wavered between giving this book a rating of 3 or 4 stars. This is not because Lisa See was unable to portray the life in this feudal Chinese society well, because much of this was vivid and interesting. The oppression of women, including the horrors of footbinding, isolation and servitude to men and one's in-laws were all clearly and often dismayingly illustrated.

One problem with this novel is how much better the tale could have been related if written in the third person, rather tha More...

Ever since reading Memoirs of a Geisha, I've been looking for a book that will let me relive that excitement. So I was hoping that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan would fit the bill for my craving for Asian drama :)

I would have to say that this book did not. I found it difficult to get invested in the characters who seemed somewhat flat to me. The narrator wasn't engaging enough to make me feel a connection to her. Really, the strength of the book in my opinion was the detail it spent in developi More...

"A woman will never become valuable if she doesn't leave her village," Mama cried out. "Goodbye, Mama," I chanted back to her. "Thank you for raising a worthless daughter." "Goodbye daughter," Baba said softly.<--- Trust me, I totally LOLed :P

Rating: 3.5

SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN started pretty strong for me. Our protagonist is now a old lady. Reminiscing, tired and full of regret. It made me instantly weary. You see, anyone who is that guilty and ashamed can only mean one thing. You roya More...

Have you ever wanted to know how it would have been if you would have lived in another time, like the Roaring Twenties, or ancient Egypt or Rome? Well the book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, took me to 19th century China. I felt like I had lived with Lily and experience her hardships, like her foot binding. This book made me realize how lucky I am to have been born in the 20th century, and to the culture I was born in. Everything that Lily and Snow Flower experience makes this book More...

Does Oprah still have a book club? Is it secretly running underground? Is the first rule Don't Talk About Book Club? I mean, how else would every woman my age know about this book? It seems as though all my GR friends over the age of thirty, many of which are lucky to finish 12 books a year, have read or plan on reading it. I just heard about Snow Flower and the Secret Fan's existence yesterday. This is odd because, regardless of what genres I prefer to read, I'm usually up to date on what's the More...

Being thousands of miles away from my closest female friends, I sometimes forget just how much I love them, and what it's like to share an intensely close friendship with another woman. "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" resurfaced those feelings for me, and reminded me of the complexity of human relationships.

At the beginning of the novel, I found myself immediately immersed in Lily's world. I didn't want to put the book down. I thought the author did a wonderful job weaving in descriptions of th More...

Every once in a while after finishing a book I am reluctant to pick up another one. I need to spend a few days thinking and picking apart the book processing new things learned, deciding how it fits in with my world view, admiring prose, and analyzing if I really "believe" the story and accept the author's conclusions. This book had all of that.

New things: nu shu a secret written language of women a thousand years old. And foot binding, I was horribly fascinated and oddly touched. Picturing mys More...

uuughughghghghg ugh ugh ugh.

i can't read about foot binding anymore. it literally makes me sick to my stomach. this is mostly due to a 15 minute video displayed twice every hour in a small missionary museum in new mexico.

the sole purpose of this museum, for reasons i still can't
explain, was to display unusual world practices encountered by missionaries around the globe, throughout history. my parents, wishing to enliven and culture my young and spongelike brain, (and also having nothing else t More...

This has got to be one of the most beautiful, yet heartbreaking books that I have ever read. The subject matter is horrific but the story is truly engaging.

The main storyline in this book is about the horrible patriarchal practise, foot-binding, that took place in China in the past. The graphic descriptions in this book are certain to turn anyone’s stomach. I would like to know who decided that 7 centimetre-long feet were “sexy.” The obsession with feet truly perplexed me; how could young girls More...

Brilliant. A spectacular book.

I haven’t read anything this deeply affecting for quite a while {at least on the level of love and relationships}. I was hooked from the beginning. And the grace and depth of Lisa See’s storytelling had me contemplating about life and the deeds and the choices we make concerning our own lives, those that are made on our behalf and how all these affects those who we most cherish. Fate. Is it something nature, or us, or others, or some higher power design for us? Is i More...

A gem of a book, an incredible tale of friendship and what it means to be a woman. This is the story of Lily, who at eighty years and known as "one who has not yet died", sets out to tell about her life, and most importantly, her connection with her friend Snow Flower. At the age of seven she and Snow Flower are paired in an emotional match that will last a lifetime, called a laotong, or "old same." They learn to communicate through a secret language created by Chinese women called nu shu, shari More...

A truly gripping tale about women living in rural China in the mid- to late 1800s. The author is wonderful at drawing the reader into this foreign landscape and culture and making you feel for the women in the story. The story is narrated by a woman at the end of her life. She's basically telling the life stories of herself and her soul-mate. As such, she sprinkles the story with little hints about what is to come later, without actually telling us how this will come to be. This built a lot of s More...

Well, I am grateful for my big, sloppy feet. That about sums it up. Actually I am torn about how I feel about this book. I thought the story was very powerful and interesting. The art of footbinding intrigued me. Interesting how that was considered beautiful in China. I truly felt sadness for these women who had to endure so many hardships so they could become marriageable and have those perfect golden lillies. I loved the story of friendship between Lily and Snow Flower though sometimes I found More...

Okay, I didn't finish this book. I started, and was really excited. It had all the elements of a story I'd love: foreign setting, new cultures and customs, a strong female lead. However, after the 3rd chapter it was apparent I could go no further. The title of said chapter? "Footbinding".

Now, I didn't know much about footbinding. I still don't know a lot, but what I read in those few pages was not only enough to distress me, but almost make me physically nauesous. Really, I almost threw up from More...

I bristled with each reference to the insignificance of women and girls. I was on edge for most of the book. It is a tragic story of Lily and her "old same", a friend from another village matched to her by a matchmaker. They are supposed to be friends forever. They communicated with one another through a secret language known only to some women in China developed to keep their thoughts secret from men. They passed these messages via the fan. It has some pretty disturbing passages and there is a More...

I just started this one last night, and I didn't want to put it down. I can't wait to finish it. :)

UPDATE:

Finished it, and I loved it. I've never read anything by Lisa See before, but I plan on reading more of her works.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is such a remarkable tale about frienship and love. It's set in nineteenth-century China, and offers quite a few historical and cultural lessons as well. Readers get to follow Lily and her laotong, Snow Flower, through childhood, their teen years, More...

Membaca buku ini, membuat saya bersyukur bahwa saya hidup di jaman ketika perempuan dihargai hak-hak dan pikirannya, didengarkan perasaan dan keinginannya. Snow Flower sedikit banyak memberi gambaran sebuah sejarah Cina di abad 19, ketika perempuan harus menjalani berbagai tradisi yang membatasi mereka sebagai manusia.

Lily, seorang anak perempuan dari keluarga miskin, dalam usia belia harus menjalani tradisi pengikatan kaki untuk mendapatkan bentuk kaki bunga lili yang sempurna. Kaki yang kecil More...

My review from Amazon (back in the days before I discovered goodreads!) -- I read this several years ago, but felt compelled to start a literary argument with my sister when I heard she actually liked this book. ;)

"The Secret Life of Bees" meets "Women of the Silk"

I'm getting a little tired of the "female friendship" genre that seems to pervade contemporary literature these days. While there are some better-written examples of this category, many of them seem to be written with the agenda of ext More...

This book is set in China, during a time when a woman's worth is based solely on the size of her feet, which is determined by footbinding. If she has small feet, she will marry well. If the footbinding goes wrong, or doesn't happen at all, the girl will be subjected to a life of slavery. The process of footbinding was horrific, and I found it very difficult to read about. The story follows two girls- Lily and Snow Flower- who are bound to each other from the age of seven. We see them grow up tog More...

lisa see is a very simple writer, and i don't mean that in a belittling way. some people excel at this minimalist form where every word counts and you can mill over brilliant word choices in a 5 word sentence that speaks volumes... simple writing is often genius. especially so in themes such as this, where images invoke feelings of delicate, polished perfection, etc. oh yes, simple could be grand. in this case, not.

and the foreshadowing-- yech. it's been a long 15 years since i read a novel that More...