Lisa See

A Novel

Peony in Love

Jeni Enjaian

A review from my old blog...

I will admit at the outset of this review that I chose not to finish the book.

Now that I have that warning out there I need to make a couple of clarifications. There is nothing explicitly wrong with this book... there are no curse words and it doesn't get into anything else like that. I would put the book down right away and never look back at it if I did. Look to the review to see why I chose not to finish this book.

As I delved into the book I realized that I might possibly enjoy a book like this. It is historical fiction, set just after the fall of the Ming dynasty in China. Unfortunately, I do not know all that much about the time period so I can't tell you if Ms. See's information was accurate or not. To the historical eye such as mine, the information does seem reliable. Ms. See weaves together traditions of Chinese religion and daily life in a way that is not obnoxious or in anyway boring.

This book explores the life of Peony or Chen Tong. She is a young, barely sixteen year old girl, given in marriage to a man that she has never met before. She absolutely loves and opera called "The Peony Pavilion" that her father puts on in honor of her sixteenth birthday. She idolized the main character of the opera who dies of lovesickness because she is unable to marry the man she loves yet is brought back to life by this very man. Peony herself also falls in love with a man and succombs to lovesickness because she thinks that she will never be able to love this man again. Only when she is just minuts away from death does her father return and tell her that the very man she fell in love with is the same man that her father arranged to have her marry.

This point in the book marks the end of just the first third of the book. Peony continues to be the main character throughout the rest of the book but she is no longer alive. She is a ghost. She becomes a hungry ghost because her father is obviously concerned with having a son (in this case an adopted son) in order to carry on the final name. Besides, Peony never married, she died just two or three days before her marriage.

I reached an uncomfortable point when I discovered that the rest of the book would be told from the point of a ghost. I read on with trepidation because I didn't know where this would go from there. I'm not sure how the book will end but I am not going to go there.

The final two thirds of the book, where Peony continues to tell her story, as a ghost, explores the afterlife from the view of traditional Chinese religion. When I look at it from that view I am both intrigued and weighed down. I feel sorry for people who believe that the afterlife is still full of heartache because they didn't do the right things when they were dead... because they or their family didn't follow the proper rituals.

It is because of the above that I choose not to read the rest of the book. I feel that I do not need to dwell on such things. Instead, on this Sunday I choose to focus my mind on things above and the great grace that God has given me to know the truth. I know that without Him I would be just as lost as the fictional Peony or the very real Lisa See.

Janet Doré

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars on this one. I thoroughly enjoy Lisa See's writing style, but there was something about the story line of this book that kept me at a distance. It was depressing, fantastical, definitely steeped in Chinese culture. It would have helped me if I knew more history about the Manchu dynasty. Maybe it's my literal personality, maybe I just wasn't in the mood to read about unrequited love...who knows. All I know is that I didn't have a problem putting it down and it didn't beckon to me from my nightstand. I'm not sorry to have read it, but I will always remain more deeply connected to Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Lydia Clouse Nord

Peony has neither seen nor spoken to any man other than her father, a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Nor has she ever ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the family villa. As her sixteenth birthday approaches she finds herself betrothed to a man she does not know, but Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a theatrical troupe to perform scenes from The Peony Pavilion, a Chinese epic opera, in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. 'Unmarried girls should not be seen in public,' says Peony's mother, but her father allows the women to watch from behind a screen. Here, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately bewitched. So begins her unforgettable journey of love, desire, sorrow and redemption.

Peony in Love A Novel

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