Shanghai Girls

Book No: 44
Title: Shanghai Girls
Author: Lisa See
Genre: Historical Fiction
Completed: 8/12/09
No. of Pages: 309
Rating: 3.5/5*****

I’m not sure where to start with this book, because I have truly mixed feelings about it. I, like so many others, read and loved Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I was looking forward to this book because I had heard many good things about it and it was strongly recommended to me by my librarian. In the end I found it a disappointing book, although there were many parts I did enjoy.

The Shanghai Girls are Pearl and May, two ‘beautiful girls’ who are models for traditional Chinese calendars. They live a life of privilege and ease, often thinking of no one but themselves. When their father arranges their marriages to Chinese-American men looking for wives, the girls refuse to go to America, setting off a chain of events that leads to heartbreaking tragedy. The sisters ultimately leave for San Francisco, and spend months on Angel Island being interrogated by immigration officials. While there a secret is revealed and a pact is made between the two that will alter the rest of their lives. Eventually arriving in Chinatown, to a life much different than they anticipated, these two sisters struggle to make a life for themselves and their new families.

There were some things I enjoyed about this book. I loved the beginning of this story, set in Shanghai in the mid 1930’s. It was very descriptive and full of fascinating detail of a city I knew very little about. Even when it gets into the invasion of the Japanese and the hardships and horrors that occurred I was fully engaged. However form the time the girls arrive on Angel Island through the ending I felt the book never reached that level of writing. I liked a lot of the history that was depicted and I learned quite a bit about the birth of Chinatown and immigrant life, but at times it felt like a history lesson, as if the author wanted to tell the history, it didn’t feel ‘lived in’.

I had several problems with the book that in the end took away from my enjoyment. The voice of the book is Pearl’s and it is her POV we get for everything, there are no other sides to the story. I also didn’t much care for the two sisters, for different reasons. May was spoiled, selfish and seemed to go through life without a care in the world for anyone except herself and what was good for her. Pearl on the other hand was the ‘good sister’ sacrificing herself again and again for May because she was her older sister and had to take care of her. I wanted Pearl to get a backbone, and when she finally does stand up for herself it is at the wrong time and has a devastating consequence. The men in the book are secondary characters, and seem to be there only to further the sister’s story along. The tragedies in this story are never ending and by the end have a soap opera quality to them – you just keep wondering what else can possibly go wrong. Some of the things that happened were predictable and when May reveals her big secret in the end I almost laughed because it was so obvious. And last but not least is the ending – there isn’t one, or at least a satisfying one. We are left with a bit of a cliff hanger, leading one to suspect a sequel.

This is actually the second book I have read this summer about the struggles of Chinese immigrants during the years leading to WWII and I found the other to be far more engaging and enjoyable, even though it was also very sad at times; if you enjoyed this book you may also like Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.