This is the story of Lily and Snowflower, two women in nineteenth-century China who were matched as laotongs, "old sames" or lifelong friends, when they were just 6 years old. It is the story of how they grew to love each other yet hurt each other through misunderstandings, lack of honesty, and differences in their life paths. The story is told by eighty-year-old Lily -- positively ancient for those times -- as she looks back with regret at many things in her life, most of all how her relationship with Snowflower played out and her role in what happened.

There are so many things about the Chinese culture of that era that I, an American woman born in the mid-twentieth century, can't begin to understand. The practice of foot-binding is prominent in this novel and I couldn't get past the sheer brutality of it. It was perpetuated on young girls by their own mothers. First of all it was excruciatingly painful. But even worse, some girls became crippled for life or even died, horribly, from infection. (Although I would argue that ALL these women were crippled; with all their toes except the big toe forcibly turned under the foot, with bones broken and forced to mend in grossly unnatural positions, walking was so painful that for the rest of their lives they were able to walk only short distances at a time.) How could a mother do that to her daughter? How could a society promote such a barbaric practice? How did it even get started, and how could such mutilation be viewed as beautiful and desirable??

Although I found the book very disturbing, I am glad I read it. Ms. See is an excellent storyteller and I am going to investigate her other works. ( )

At first I thought this would be yet another Chinese tragedy. It was but the voice was compelling and I thought the author did thorough research. The details were facinating and the fallibility of the narrator was belivable. ( )

2,5 stars. ( )

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An emotionally disturbing novel about two young girls bound together as laotong, kindred sisters in the isolated world of Chinese women in the Hunan province. Brought together in early childhood after living through the trauma of footbinding, Lily and Snow Flower are declared laotong and go through much of their life together until a misunderstanding separates them. Told through the lens of an old woman, Lily tells the story of Snow Flower and beseeches the gods for forgiveness. ( )