Shanghai Girls: A Novel
Where to buy Shanghai Girls: A Novel books online?
- ISBN13: 9780812980530
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In 1937 Shanghai—the Paris of Asia—twenty-one-year-ancient Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Both are gorgeous, modern, and carefree—until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth. To repay his debts, he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America. Though inseparable best friends, the sisters also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. Along the way they make terrible sacrifices, face impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold quick to who they are—Shanghai girls.Amazon.com Review
Book Description
For readers of the phenomenal bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Like–a stunning new novel from Lisa See about two sisters who place Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles.
May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are gorgeous, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family tree is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides.
But when the sisters place China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West)–where they are under arrest, interrogated, and humiliated for months–they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know.
A novel about two sisters, two cultures, and the struggle to find a new life in America while bound to the ancient, Shanghai Girls is a fresh, fascinating adventure from beloved and bestselling leader Lisa See.
Amazon Exclusive: Lisa See on Shanghai Girls
I’m writing this on a plane to Shanghai. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about all the things I want to see and do on this research trip: look deeper into the Art Deco movement in Shanghai, visit a 17th-century house in a village of 300 people to observe the Sweeping the Graves Festival, and check out some ancient theaters in Beijing. But as I sit on the plane, I’m not thinking of the adventures that are yet to be but of the people and places I’ve left behind. I’ve been gone from home only a few hours and already I’m homesick!This puts me in mind of Pearl and May, the characters in Shanghai Girls. This feeling–longing for home and missing the people left behind–is at the heart of the novel. We live in a nation of immigrants. We all have a name in our families who was courageous enough, frightened enough, or crazy enough to place the home country to come to America. I’m a real mutt in terms of ancestry, but I know that the Chinese side of my family tree left China because they were fleeing war, famine, and poverty. They were lured to America in hopes of a better life, but leaving China also meant adage goodbye to the homes they’d been born in, to their parents, brothers, and sisters, and to everything and everyone they knew. This experience is the blood and tears of American experience.
Pearl and May are lucky, because they come to America together. They’re sisters and they have each additional. I’ve permanently wanted to write about sisters and I finally got my chance with Shanghai Girls. You could say that either I’m an only child or that I’m one of four sisters, because I have a ex- step-sister I’ve known for over 50 years and two half-sisters from different halves who I’ve known since they were born. Is Shanghai Girls autobiographical? Not really, but my sister Katharine and I once had a fight that was like the flour fight that May and Pearl got into when they were girls. And there was an ice cream incident that I used in the novel that sent my sister Clara right down memory lane when she read the manuscript. I’m also the eldest, and we all know what that means. I’m the one who’s supposed to be the bossy know-it-all. (But if that’s right, then why are they the ones who are permanently right?) What I know is that we’re very different from each additional and our life experiences couldn’t be more varied, and yet we have a deep emotional tie that goes way beyond friendship. My sisters knew me when I was a shy small kid, helped me survive my first broken heart, share the memories of terrible family tree car trips, and were at my side for the most pleased moments in my life. More recently, we’ve begun to share things like the loss of our childhood homes, the changing of the neighborhoods we grew up in, and the frailties and illnesses of our heap parents.
My emotions and experiences are deeply entwined with the tales I write. So as I glide over the Pacific, of course I’m thinking about May and Pearl, the people and places they left behind, the hopes and dreams that kept them moving forwards, and the might and support they establish in each additional, but I’m thinking about myself too. As soon as I get to the hotel, I’m going to call my spouse and sons to tell them I arrived safely, and then I’m going to send some e-mails to my sisters.–Lisa See
(Photo © Patricia Williams)
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i have read this tale or a variation of it before a perfect bore
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I have truly loved Lisa See’s previous books (Snow Flower and Peony), so I was very exciting to see this new addition. Her lyrical writing and the depth of her characterizations have permanently held my interest.
Shanghai Girls relates the tale of two young Chinese women as they experience war, escape, rape, arranged marriages, and a journey to America where they eventually start to come to grips with their intricate relationship. Pearl, the elder and narrator, was charged with the protection of her younger sister, May, as they navigate the challenges before them. Yet, she also constructs a stance of victim, which tempers her decisions and her path.
The tale is satisfying and engrossing, yet the ending leaves too many loose ends for me. May is left behind with her invalid spouse, and Pearl starts a journey back to her homeland to find Joy, the daughter they shared, but who ran away when Joy learned the truth of her parentage and birth. One can only hope that Ms See will continue their tale, for this one is very unfinished.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I’m a devoted fan of Lisa See’s, and she did not dissapoint me with “Shanghai Girls.” It was simple to live the adventures of Pearl and May through this well-crafted novel. Although I have neither visited the Los Angeles area nor China, throughout this masterpiece, I felt the rush of the crowds, smelled and tasted Oriental foods, envisioned vibrant colors and gray horizons, heard the words of discrimination of outsiders; but, most importantly, I sensed the impenetrable bond of traditonal family tree support,especially between the two sisters.
As an leader myself, Nothing But the Blood, I know the tremendous amount of time and effort that go into a novel. Lisa See still amazes me over and over with her willingness to share her knowledge and research through such powerful images.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The first Lisa See book I read was last July, when I selected up “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel” at Limits (see my review on that page, if you’d like to know how my experience with the novel went). I chose to give See a second chance and bought this yesterday. I was thinking, footbinding was more depressing and a darker topic than immigration from an Asian country to a Western one.
I really wanted to like this book, but as you can see from my review… I didn’t delight in it all that much. The novel is loaded with cliches. Any person who has spent time in Asia or a less fortunate foreign country would probably experience some of these events, or hear of them through word of mouth.
We start off the book with a rich man who stirred his wife and two young female children from Guangdong (or Canton, as is the Western spelling and what See refers to the province in this book) to the largest city in China, Shanghai. He has racked up six handymen to help around the house, including but not limited to: a cook, gardener, and servants.
Sorry to say, the reader’s fascination and awe with this rich family tree in China falls fleeting, and quick. In a surprise announcement, their father breaks the news that, because he foolishly gambled away the family tree chance, he has set up arranged marriages for his two daughters, who have already made it through the pains of childhood and being a teenager in the first few pages of the tale. They are of officially authorized ages, respectively: May is eighteen and Pearl twenty-one.
Several awkward entourages with the Chinese American men follow. Their mother passes away, and the girls never again come into contact with their father or additional family tree members. May does not lose her virginity to the man her father told her to marry, nor do they ever manage to have a strong bond, but somehow becomes pregnant through casual sex with somebody else. On the additional hand, Pearl is infertile. Throughout all this, the four have arrived at Angel’s Island, a cramped, dirty immigration camp in San Francisco. When her sister becomes pregnant, Pearl lies to everybody else and claims that she has become pregnant with her first child. She and her spouse raise the daughter as their own, even after the four go to Los Angeles.
Many more tragic, long events follow. At many times throughout the book, I could not remember how the sequence of events followed. It was hard for me to keep up with all the new incidents and thoughts (most of them tragic) that Lisa See kept pushing towards the reader. I establish most of these, along with the dialogue, to be featureless and unbelievable. When I finally had pieced out that one thing in the tale had happened, another completely new event or concept would come along to wipe it out. I regularly wanted to just place the book down and go to sleep. Needless to say, I could not tell to the characters in any way.
Lisa See’s books are regularly aimed at an Asian immigrant audience, or children of persons people. I despise to say this, but many additional writers, such as Amy Tan, can and have done a lot better than her. She regularly tries to incorporate self-researched tidbits of East Asian history and shove it into her novels. It would be fine if she could manage it, but as a couple additional reviewers have noted, her novels regularly come published appearing as a history major’s university notes: excellent details and hints, but not satisfying for some to have as pleasure reading material.
Overall, it just really depends on what you’re looking for. Her past facts this time around were well-chosen and structured for such a book, the plot was really organized and made sense (even though I felt it was cliche), compared to her additional books. I won’t be reading another book place into the world by See again, but it seems she did sprinkle a small effort into this latest one. Two stars.
Oh, and I don’t know why, but as I write this, the book is insanely overpriced. It was unrestricted in late May of this year and I still paid $27.44 USD for it at Limits. I returned it the next day, after staying up all night to end it. Paperback doesn’t come out until next February, nearly an entire year after the original hardcover did.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I establish this tale one of inspiration and information. If you like Susan See’s writing, don’t miss out on this one!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5