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Shanghai Girls: A Novel |  | Author: See, Lisa
Publisher: Random House
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  287 reviews
Sales Rank: 306
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B001NLL82Y
Publication Date: May 14, 2009
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Amazon.com Review
Book Description
For readers of the phenomenal bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love--a stunning new novel from Lisa See about two sisters who leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles. May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides. But when the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West)--where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months--they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know. A novel about two sisters, two cultures, and the struggle to find a new life in America while bound to the old, Shanghai Girls is a fresh, fascinating adventure from beloved and bestselling author Lisa See.
Amazon Exclusive: Lisa See on Shanghai Girls
 I’m writing this on a plane to Shanghai. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about all the things I want to see and do on this research trip: look deeper into the Art Deco movement in Shanghai, visit a 17th-century house in a village of 300 people to observe the Sweeping the Graves Festival, and check out some old theaters in Beijing. But as I sit on the plane, I’m not thinking of the adventures that are ahead but of the people and places I’ve left behind. I’ve been gone from home only a few hours and already I’m homesick!
This puts me in mind of Pearl and May, the characters in Shanghai Girls. This feeling--longing for home and missing the people left behind--is at the heart of the novel. We live in a nation of immigrants. We all have someone in our families who was brave enough, scared enough, or crazy enough to leave the home country to come to America. I’m a real mutt in terms of ancestry, but I know that the Chinese side of my family left China because they were fleeing war, famine, and poverty. They were lured to America in hopes of a better life, but leaving China also meant saying goodbye to the homes they’d been born in, to their parents, brothers, and sisters, and to everything and everyone they knew. This experience is the blood and tears of American experience. Pearl and May are lucky, because they come to America together. They’re sisters and they have each other. I’ve always wanted to write about sisters and I finally got my chance with Shanghai Girls. You could say that either I’m an only child or that I’m one of four sisters, because I have a former step-sister I’ve known for over 50 years and two half-sisters from different halves who I’ve known since they were born. Is Shanghai Girls autobiographical? Not really, but my sister Katharine and I once had a fight that was like the flour fight that May and Pearl got into when they were girls. And there was an ice cream incident that I used in the novel that sent my sister Clara right down memory lane when she read the manuscript. I’m also the eldest, and we all know what that means. I’m the one who’s supposed to be the bossy know-it-all. (But if that’s true, then why are they the ones who are always right?) What I know is that we’re very different from each other and our life experiences couldn’t be more varied, and yet we have a deep emotional connection that goes way beyond friendship. My sisters knew me when I was a shy little kid, helped me survive my first broken heart, share the memories of bad family car trips, and were at my side for the happiest moments in my life. More recently, we’ve begun to share things like the loss of our childhood homes, the changing of the neighborhoods we grew up in, and the frailties and illnesses of our myriad parents. My emotions and experiences are deeply entwined with the stories I write. So as I fly over the Pacific, of course I’m thinking about May and Pearl, the people and places they left behind, the hopes and dreams that kept them moving forward, and the strength and solace they found in each other, but I’m thinking about myself too. As soon as I get to the hotel, I’m going to call my husband and sons to tell them I arrived safely, and then I’m going to send some e-mails to my sisters.--Lisa See (Photo © Patricia Williams)
Product Description
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.
As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.
At its heart, Shanghai Girls is a story of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends who share hopes, dreams, and a deep connection, but like sisters everywhere they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other, but each knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt the other the most. Along the way they face terrible sacrifices, make impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are–Shanghai girls.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 287
 Shanghi Girls July 26, 2010
P. A. Nelson (USA)
The book was well written and very engrossing. The matter of fact ways the author describes the conditions of the land and its people really makes the reader stop and think about how bad things really were.
Great story that just ends... July 26, 2010
Helen
I really enjoyed this book, but was very disappointed in the ending. It just ends! It could have easily gone on for another hundred or two pages and I would have been happy. I really wanted to keep reading!
"An educated woman is a worthless woman." Confucious July 25, 2010
BrianB (Northern California)
As the quote above suggests, this novel reflects the culture and traditions of Chinese immigrants. Not all of their beliefs are politically correct.
In 1937 Shanghai was the most famous city in China, a spectacular and sordid collection of three million people, a city with a reputation for decadence and the pursuit of pleasure, side by side with abject poverty. It was also a great international city, dotted with skyscrapers and art deco buildings, with large numbers of people from all over the world, including Russian refugees from communist persecution, and European Jews fleeing the Nazis. This all came to an abrupt end with the Japanese invasion of China.
This is the story of two sisters, wealthy and privileged by Chinese standards, who enjoy a privileged life in Shanghai until they are sold into marriage by their father, who has to pay large gambling debts. They suffer through the brutality of the Japanese invasion, and make a daring escape to the U.S, where they experience the mixed blessings of life in Los Angeles'Chinatown. There they become a reluctant part of an assembled family, each with their own secrets and long held resentments. Their destinies are tied to their personalities, their actions, and their limitations, even though they are caught up in events that are much larger than themselves.
Lisa See uses action and spare, tight prose to give the reader a realistic and immediate portrait of her character's lives. You get to know the two sisters quickly. I was hooked by the end of the first chapter, and I knew that I was in the hands of a great storyteller. The harrowing escape from Shanghai, the internment on Angel Island, and the continual worries during the ant communist scares of the 1950's revealed a part of the American immigrant experience that I had not encountered before. Although I had read about these events in the dispassionate prose of my history textbooks, this story brought the history home to my heart. It was so much more immediate and realistic, a much better way to learn history.
The author explains her sources in the afterward, both written and oral. Ms. See has given us a find adventure novel, band also a vivid portrait of the history of Chinese Americans during the mid 20th century. I recommend this novel to all those who appreciate good historical fiction. Note: there are some graphic descriptions of violence (including rape) in the book, which reflects historical fact.
 Melodramatic chick lit. July 23, 2010
PeeWee 278
It used every melodramatic cliche in the book: beautiful girls, gang rape, flight from dangerous thugs, persecution by authority, misfortune and poverty, treachery, and suicide. There was not a drop of humor in the story, although all real lives have some light effects in them. I found this book tortured and tedious. I also didn't care enough for any of the characters. They all felt made up, as if they each needed to represent a type. The men were particularly wispy. The main character, Pearl, felt like a patchwork quilt of people and their experiences. Many of her actions or thoughts seemed contradictory, perhaps because too many bits were stitched into one "dragon" lady.
I like the environment of vintage L.A. that See sets up, although it's too thinly drawn. And the trials in how immigrants faked their ways into this country was new to me - interesting. But the unbelievable mechanics of the plot and interactions of the characters grind on and on, shoving aside the rest.
If this were a good tearjerker, I wouldn't be so hard on it. But not one death or misfortune was told well enough to suck me in and wring out a tear. After each predictable blow of life's hammer in this over-long story, I rolled my eyes. SPOILER: Of course she would get pregnant by Sam. Of course it would be a boy. Of course it would be born dead. Of course she'd never be able to bear another child. And why does Pearl never consider that Joy is the painter's daughter. She saw her sister naked with the man. Denial? Come on. And the suicide pissed me off, it being the cheapest trick of all. I didn't believe it.
There is no poetry in the language, no richness of description, and the epiphany toward the end is just like Dorothy's in the Wizard of Oz: "There's no place like [my new] home."
Nothing new here.
And yes, the word "palpable" is in there as it is in every mediocre novel written. (That word and "preternatural" are verbal pet peeves.)
Shanghai Girls July 22, 2010
JJ
Very happy with my book. In the mail box with in several days of my order. Plus the story is an A+.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 287
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