Pai Kit Fai (1929–2018)

I give the first part of The Concubine’s Daughter 4 stars. I was riveted by the plight of girls and women in early 20th century China, and learned about Chinese culture. The plot was intriguing, the details fascinating, and the writing lovely.

I give the second half of the book 2.5 stars; it was a repeat of the first half, but with a different character. The story would have been better off ending with the first part, or possibly divided into two books. I like an epic family story, but my show more reaction to this one was, “Do we have to go through this all over again?”

The plot and antagonists were similar, but less engaging the second time around. The horrors faced by the women started to seem like someone’s sick fantasy rather than historical insight – though I don’t know enough about Chinese culture to make that statement with certainty.

I did hang in through the end, and read the final author notes with great interest. I would recommend this book if it came up in conversation, but I won’t go out of my way to tell everyone I know about it. show less

What a terrible book. I would summarize the plot as 'women in China attempt to fend off the advances of Chinese men, who are uniformly portrayed as cruel, greedy, and/or rapists, until they can manage to catch the eye of a white (or part-white) man, who is respectful and loving and appalled by Chinese brutality.' Aside from the hideous racial messages of the book, the plot consists of a string of trauma, including multiple attempted rapes, that have little to no emotional resonance with the show more women who are the victims, and does not affect their feelings towards men, sex (when with an appropriately white partner, of course), or much of anything (with one notable exception, which seemed to have more to do with moving the plot along than anything else). I was unsurprised to learn, after reading the author's interview included at the back of the book, that in spite of the Chinese name that appears on the cover, the author is actually a British man who married a Chinese woman (just like all the heroes in the book!), and is publishing the book under the Chinese name that her family gave him (a neat bit of cultural appropriation). I was also unsurprised to learn that his 'research' for a novel set in the early 1900s seemed to consisted of 'living in China for the past 30 years' and 'marrying into a Chinese family that donated a library once.'

The book labels itself as 'in the style of Memoirs of a Geisha.' I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha, and am fully capable of enjoying a good story even when it is somewhat Orientalist. However, Memoirs of a Geisha included interesting characters and an engaging plot (in my opinion), which can cause me to overlook quite a bit, while The Concubine's Daughter came across to me as a piece of self-indulgent wish-fulfillment with little to recommend it. Blatant foreshadowing (for example, a vow to kill a certain character at the age of 3) never comes to anything at all, leaving the reader to wonder why the foreshadowing wasn't edited out, and many characters were one-dimensional. I cannot recommend this book to anyone at all. show less

This story follows the lives of the women in one family over three generations. The story begins with the gruesome death of Pai-Ling as she witnesses her husbands attempt to murder her newborn daughter . We learn that this would be the fifth daughter that he has buried over thirty years. A practice common in China at this time as girls were considered an expensive liability. Those fortunate enough to survive were treated as servants until the age of six or eight years, when they were sold to show more become slaves, prostitutes or concubines.
Li Xia, through the intercession of a silver fox is not dispensed with and hence suffers the fate of being sold.
She becomes a young woman of strength, determination and intelligence, outwitting her protagonists many times.
In the last section of the book we are introduced to her daughter, Siu Sing who endeavours to discover the mystery of her parentage and reclaim her rightful inheritance, settling old scores along the way.
The author shows us a culture steeped in both spititualism and superstition, where treachery and corruption abound.
The plot is somewhat predictable, but appears well researched, emphasising the male dominated society that China was in the Twentieth century. show less

While some sections of this novel were well written and engaging, overall the overwhelming violence of many passages was unnecessary and a huge turn off. I had to force myself to read through several hundred pages of misogyny and violence in order to review the book. I think the editor could have chopped about a hundred pages from this text and the story would have been just as thorough and perhaps more engaging.