Bound (2004)

The book was a Chinese version of Cinderella and I have read a Chinese version of the same story and both were completely different from each other. I didn't see many similarities to Cinderella until around the ending. The main character’s fairy godmother was her own diseased mother who left her, her belongings. It seemed very convenient though in the story but, I was willing to look over it because the story was till good. I read this book because the cover and the summary.

I liked this Asian cinderella tale when I was reading it. But it didn't give me any characters or situations that stuck with me after I closed the book. So much so that a few weeks back when I ran across it again here at GR I thought oh, interesting, and requested it from the library. Five pages in I thought, wait I've read this? Yeah, I had.

I still enjoyed it enough to read it again but somehow I just feel... distanced. I don't know, maybe its because the main character is so passively obedient so much of the time, which I understand, its appropriate to the setting, but I couldn't connect. She works really hard and quite creatively at times doing things that make no sense at all because she is ordered to by her stepmother and its important to be dutiful. So yeah okay, being dutiful important in her time and place. Plus what else is she going to do, go starve in the street?

But wouldn't a person at least say in their own head, hey this is dumb? Something? Where is the creativity she uses to carry out the tasks? Why doesn't it show up more in the way she thinks about her own situation? Also the prince really does swoop in from nowhere in the very last part of the book. I didn't even know he existed until the story was nearly over. ( )

For a short book (186 pages) this one packs quite a story. Napoli is best known for rewriting well known fairy tales and in this story, she transforms the story of Cinderella into a Chinese folk tale.

Xing Xing's mother and father are dead and she lives with her stepmother and sister, Wei Ping. Their father would not allow Wei Ping's feet to be bound but as soon as he died, her mother started the painful process. I thought it was so clever of Napoli to rewrite the Cinderella story that centered around foot size and shoes to include the intense and barbaric ritual of foot binding.

I found the part about the prince at the end a bit contrived especially since he did not attend the festival and Xing Xing did not have a chance to recite her poem to attract the prince's attention. All he had to go on was her gold slipper.

I was charmed by use of Xing Xing's mother leaving behind gifts for her daughter rather than inventing a fairy godmother. I found this even more special since the story takes place in a country where dead ancestors are revered. ( )

3.5

This was the first thing I read by Napoli, and though it started strong and had a great sense of place, in some respects it was a letdown. Not completely, and I would still recommend it, but...
I'll just get right into it. I thought it had a very strong start. The Cinderella aspects were clear and the sense of place was beautiful. It was reinforced with the language, too, so that it didn't seem like a Western character and sensibilities dropped in an Eastern setting. Everything matched and felt lovingly researched and crafted. I really enjoyed that. There was a beautiful gentleness to it all. Xing Xing and her journey were enjoyable and rootforable. It is a very different take on Cinderella than most of us are used to, but it hits the same notes and explores the well-known version in interesting ways.

For example, I loved the use that Napoli made of some of the darker elements of the tale that have been largely lost to Disney, erm, time. The mutilation of the old tale -- where the Stepmother cuts off one daughters toes and the other's heels in an attempt to make the shoes fit -- is made use of in a genius way, really, tying it in with traditional foot-binding and the horror and desperation of the practice. And then, to add in the element of Xing Xing's belief about her "fish-mother" and the end result of that storyline...It was a very smart use of both the traditional tale and the history and culture of the setting.

I loved, too, that even in spite of the Cinderella-ness and the element I mentioned up there in the spoiler, the stepmother and sister, and any "wickedness" that would generally be attached to their names was really understandable. The "wicked" stepmother isn't really wicked -- she's just human, and dealing with things in what she thinks is the best way. They are human and relatable, even when they are doing repugnant things.

What knocked it back for me considerably in the end was the end, but it was so very rushed and almost cheesy with the prince, and I really wanted more development to the ending. Almost felt like a brush-off. It's a short book. There was really no reason that it couldn't have gone on a bit longer and given me some reason to hope that Xing Xing is going to have some kind of a chance at Happily Ever whatnot. It was abrupt, and it kept me from the satisfaction I was looking forward to, and because of that, I feel like any recommendation I give for this super quick read has to come with a large caveat... ( )

This novel is based on Chinese Cinderella tales. Fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.

I read this book because I have always been fascinated by the ancient Chinese custom of foot binding. For a thousand years, Chinese mothers would bind their daughters' feet tightly in very long bandages of cloth, squeezing and folding their toes under their feet in order to make the feet smaller. These "lotus"쳌 feet were considered more attractive than regular feet; and the smaller a girl's feet were, the more valuable she was as a prospective wife.

This book's title refers to the many ways in which its characters are "bound."쳌 The main character Xing-Xing does not have her feet bound because she must be able to work and run errands for her step-mother; so Xing-Xing is bound in servitude to her step-mother. Xing-Xing's half-sister must go through the excruciating foot-binding process, however, and her feet are bound. The step-mother is bound to the old Chinese custom of binding her daughter's feet so that she will be desirable to a prospective husband.

This story is intriguing, but it is also a little painful to read. The life these three characters live is less than comfortable, and bad things happen. If you like good, candid, fact-based historical fiction, you will like this book. ( )