2008-03 Discussion of Snow Flower and Secret Fan

I look forward to hearing all about this book. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, so I trust someone else will get this thing going.

I'm still working on it. Had to interrupt my reading for some terrible Ernest Hemingway stories for my book club at the library!

I have the book, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'll try to get through it before the end of the month.

I listened to this last month, but didn't realize it was classified as YA. Not that it's *inappropriate* for YA, but it didn't particularly read like it was geared in that direction.

I haven't even had a chance to start it yet! I'm still near the beginning of Inkheart, ack.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan isn't actually YA; we just decided to read it anyway.

Got it.

(I wasn't keeping up with the nominations thread... y'all just happened to pick a book I finished recently anyways. Of course, I'm sure that was top on the list of considerations, heh. :)

I seem to remember it being on some sort of list as something that would appeal to YAs, but had been written and published as an adult novel...I could be wrong, but that is what I seem to remember.

This is the thread I was looking for--don't know why I couldn't see it earlier! I finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan last night, and really don't see much appeal for teens. In fact, there wasn't much appeal for ME! The writing was okay, but seemed slightly stilted. Perhaps that was intentional, because the lives of the characters were certainly stilted--or stultifying! The characters weren't particularly appealing and the story didn't draw me in. A much better story set in an earlier Asian time was Memoirs of a Geisha, though I probably wouldn't recommend that for teens, either! Eager to see what the rest of you thought of Snow Flower.

#8 - For the sake of keeping the discussion going, was there anything you did enjoy about the book?

I read it a while ago and I do remember that I liked it but didn't really love it. I remember thinking that it wasn't quite as good as some of Amy Tan's novels and that I liked Lisa See's mystery books better. However, I was really impressed with the historical details. I thought the whole thing with the women's writing (I can't remember the term for it) was really fascinating.

I also liked the lesson of how jumping to conclusions can ruin relationships. In terms of this book appealing to young adults, I think it's a powerful theme for young people, girls especially, to take away from the novel.

Well, the detail was certainly amazing--everything from the footbinding to the way they raise there children--and the construct of their family life--was pretty much unbelievable!

Yes, the evil of jumping to conclusions is a great theme for young people to think about, except for the very end I didn't see it as a major emphasis.

I was really struck by the details of the footbinding. Of course I had heard about footbinding before but I never really had any idea of how severe it was. I just always thought they simply tightly bound the foot to restrict it's growth, I never realized they broke bones and bent the foot back on itself. That part of the book was really hard for me to read.

Hmmm - this discussion is majorly dying out. Anyone else read the book that wants to comment?

#11 - I was pretty disturbed by the footbinding parts as well. It's amazing what was considered beautiful and the lengths that people would go to in order to achieve what they deemed desirable. I was definitely unaware that the practice could be fatal.

After reading this book, I kept wondering why Lily felt so guilty about how her relationship with Snow Flower ended. It seemed from the start of their friendship, that Snow Flower was pretending to be something that she was not - or at least not any more. And when Lily found out the truth, she stood by her friend - blaming her mother more for lying to her than to her loatong for never telling her the truth. And they made a pact to not lie to each other again - but that's what happened. Snow Flower had a hard marrage, and when she asked for advice from Lily - Snow Flower did things that were against customes, things that Lily thought Snow Flower would never do - and to find out in the end that Snow Flower's other friends blamed Lily for Snow Flower's actions....that just seemed too much for me. I guess I felt like Snow Flower never was a true friend, always trying to put on what other people wanted to see and never show who she really was. She never once told Lily, I took your advice and my husband and I are trying to have another child even though customs say we should wait 100 days.... if she had, Lily would have told her that she did not mean right away, she would have made herself more clear. I felt bad for Lily, to have a friend, who you think understands you and knows you so well, and who you think you know and understand completely - to find out that they were never really truthful with you - that hurts. And for Lily's rage at her for taking in other friends, I can understand Lily's reaction. I guess to me, the whole "place the blame" on Lily for not understanding her friend was something that felt wrong to me. It takes two people to cause a misunderstanding. And Snow Flower was made a marter for her friendship to Lily by the other ladies at the end of the story. I may be a little sensitive on this, having lost trust in friends who I thought were more like family than friend....
Oh well, I'll end my rant of this book now - sorry if I've offended anyone.

I really enjoyed this book. It described a period in history and a culture of which I had little knowledge. Of course, I've heard about footbinding, but didn't realize that the foot was actually broken and bent back upon itself.

The theme of friendship was powerful to me. I felt bad for both Lily and Snowflower. They were bound by their cultural expectations and let each other down because of those expectations.

My "aha" moment came near the end when Lily realized that she had misinterpreted Snowflower's message and Lily's reaction to the message ruins their friendship. Throughout the book, See mentions that nu shu is not as specific as "men's writing" and that context is very important. How tragic that Lily didn't remember that.

Ultimately, the themes of friendship, the power of family and culture, treatment of women and love of all kinds are universal and should appeal to adults and young adults as well. I probably wouldn't consider this a YA novel specifically. It should appeal to older teens on a number of levels as well as adults.

I think an important theme of the book is friendship and no matter what happens, how different your lives turn out you still care about what happens...