Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

“Raising a girl and marrying her off as like building a fancy road for others to use.”

There was a time in Old China when women had to develop their own form of writing to communicate away from the sight of the controlling world of men. Where “men’s writing” had more than 50,000 unique characters, women’s writing had 600 characters that were used phonetically to create 10,000 words.

The use of women’s writing, called nu shu, is one of the foundations of this historical novel. It relates how two women in 19th century rural China developed a lifelong relationship that reflected not only their personal circumstances but also the harsh and controlling times in which they lived.  

Some of their story is harsh and unpleasant. We witness firsthand the physical and psychological abuse experienced by women whose roles in life were determined by birth as a female: work, manage the household, arranged marriage, all focused on giving birth to and raising sons.

The story is told by Lily who, now over 80, tells the story of her life. She starts with still-fresh memories of being a young child whose daily routine is limited to the household “women’s room” as she is groomed for eventual betrothal in marriage.

Some of this grooming is physically gruesome. Other forms are psychological and based on how women were expected to behave as they entered a society where women were subservient to men.

 While is not unusual for tales of an underdog to reflect how the underdog eventually turns table, breaks out, and emerges victorious, that’s not what happens here. The author accomplishes a much more challenging task: she shows how Lily and Snow Flower’s relationship evolves over the years.

As in real life, the relationship is not always pretty. Life in those times was inevitably harsh and played out against real world tribulations including famine, civil strife, greed, political intrigue, class discrimination, and epidemic. Even women whose lot in life improved—as did Lily’s—were still bound to servitude with their worth being inevitably tied to their sons’ and husbands’ circumstances.

I do not wish to portray this novel as “100% grim.“ That would do it a major disservice. Lisa See’s writing is at times beautiful and lyrical. The effort she has put into researching the social and cultural details of those times simply shines.

As in Frank Herbert’s Dune world and Tolkien‘s Middle Earth, the world See creates seems real. The major difference is that the world See writes about in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was real.

Review copyright (c) 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald

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