SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN

Jodi Long takes us into the nineteenth-century world of two Hunan Chinese women as Lily Lu, an 80-year-old matriarch, reflects on her life. As a young girl, she and Snow Flower, the daughter of a wealthy family, bonded for life, exchanging messages on a fan written in "nu shu," a secret language known only to women. Long helps us feel Lily's torment as she suffers through foot binding, made worse by the callousness of her distant mother. We watch the vivid relationship of the two women as they experience marriage, pregnancy, pestilence, and war, continually fighting the constraints of their gender. See's research is extensive; her writing is immediate, involving, and graceful. All these elements are strengthened by Long's reading. S.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 07]