Peony in Love: A Novel

I enjoyed this book even more than Snowflower. When Peony died and the story moved into the spirit realm, I was a little skeptical... That most of the story takes place after the main character dies is very unusual. Peony in Love made me look intently at my relationships with my husband and with the most important women in my life: my daughter and mother. I enjoyed every minute reading this book, but most importantly, the book gave me insight into my own life.

I was not expecting this novel to live up to Snow Flower and almost didn't buy it based on a review in a magazine. Boy was I wrong! This was an amazing emotional journey of a young girl's love and loss through her life and her death. I learned so much about the ancestral ways of the Chinese that I never understood before. It made me sad that we don't honor our ancestors the same way. The intertwining of the famous Peony Pavillion opera was intriguing as well. I thought that the novel was very different in its approach not only to love mainly through the after life but also in its presentation of historically how Chinese woman and girls were viewed in society. Its this inherent lack of value placed on daughters that helped cause so many girl abandonments during the one child policy many years after this story takes place. A beautifully written novel and I am looking forward in earnest to the next project of Lisa See.

I loved Snowflower and the Secret Fan and couldn't dare to get my hopes up but I found this book equally excellent. Lisa's ability to create a visual around a world and time that is so different from today is amazing. I found myself torn from day to day thought, thinking about what I had just read and looking forward to reading the remainder of the book - sorry for it to end - like any good read should be.

Lisa See's latest endeavor, Peony in Love, is destined to be as successful as her previous novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. With too much intelligent history to be pegged a romance, Peony in Love is, indeed, romantic. It is a tale of love and death in 17th century China - a time of Cataclysm and a place where, pound for pound, salt was more valuable than women. Painting her words on a ghostly dreamscape, See once again explores themes of love, language and the strength of women amidst a revealing and sometimes disturbing history.