Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See



I enjoyed this book.  It's been on my TBR for a long time and I found it recently in the used book store.

It's the story of two girls in China in the 1800's who become laotong or life time friends.  They share a secret woman's language that they use to record messages between one another on a fan.

Lily tells the story of their becoming laotong and how their lives unfold from the time their feet are bound to make them attractive for marriage through their lives as daughters, wives and mothers.

Early in the book, Lily who tells the story says:

"I am still learning about love, I though I understood it - not just mother love but the love for one's parent, for one's husband for one's laotong.  I've experienced the other types of love - pity love, respectful love, and gratitude love.  ...I see that I didn't value the most important love - deep-heart love."

It's a book of regret and sorrow and misunderstanding that leads to tragedy. Along the way I learned about Chinese women of the period and the customs of the culture.  A good read.

For Wondrous Words Wednesdays I found this strange one in this story:

Enfeoffment - a granting of land to a person and his descendants in return for pledging to protect the Emperor.   "He received much land from the emperor as an enfeoffment..."

Published:  2005  Read: January 2015  Genre: Fiction

ISBN: 0-8129-6806-9

2 comments:

  1. Your new word is very interesting. It makes me want to know more about this custom of giving land in exchange for loyalty. I wonder where and when this was practiced. Looks like I'm off on a little research adventure. Thanks.

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  2. A very interesting word, never heard of it before.

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