Our last meeting of the school year-June 09-was held in a Chinese restaurant. Several of us enjoyed this title enough to read the author's other book. Several of us have lived in Asia and better understood the cultural values and beliefs governing the character's actions and events. ( )

Excellent, excellent, excellent! The history, the story, the saga, her prose and writing - all wonderful! A must read! ( )

This story of Lily and Snow Flower in rural China follows their lives from childhood to old age. The two girls become close friends - like sisters they make a life commitment (laotong). For me, the most feeling moments came with the author's description of "foot-binding." I am familiar with this old practice but her graphic descriptins sent chill up my spine. Breaking and rebreaking the feet every few weeks was not only painful but also a cause of death in about 10% of the girls. The object of all this suffering was to have small feet which would be sexually attractive to highly placed men whose control of their women was absolute and often cruel. Not a pretty picture of that culture.

The story follows the two lives thru marriage, childbirth and motherhood, and a revolt in this part of China which caused starvation and illness thruout the region. The girls learned a form of women's writing called "nu-shu" and wrote messages and private thoughts to each other from their isolated rooms on the second floors of their houses. Snowflower's father was a butcher which put him on the lowest social rung and Lily's father, while he had a good position in Federal service, was a gambler and an alcoholic and eventualy put his family in severe straits. In mid life the girls had a falling out and didn't resolve their relationship until Snowflower was on her deathbed.

This was a moving story with beautiful description of the countryside and revealing fact about the customs of Rural China ( )

I enjoyed the novel (I'm a huge historical fiction and Chinese history buff), but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I may be unfairly comparing it to Amy Tan's novels, which leave you feeling both emotionally raw and touched. ( )

Starts right in, great read, kept me turning pages to the very last. ( )