Blog Tour - Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Shanghai Girls
Lisa See
Random House
May 2009
309 pg.

My Thoughts
Pearl and May are two beautiful girls who live the good life in Shanghai. Shopping, partying, and being the face on calendars hanging in all the shops and houses - they believe their lives are perfect. Then, one day their father announces that they are to be wed. He has arranged marriages for them both. Pearl's and May's lives change drastically.

When war comes to Shanghai, May and Pearl know they must find their husbands in order to survive. What they find waiting for them in Los Angeles is nothing they could have prepared for. The find a family with "paper sons" and "paper partners" and girls are still of no value. I found the idea of people inventing relatives in order to become citizens fascinating. Selling yourself to come to America and find the "Gold Mountain" so that your "father" can know his ancestors will be blessed when he dies.

Lisa See includes lots of details to give you an idea of the places the girls see and the experiences that they go through. This can serve to put the reader in the book with the characters but for me, it made the book a little harder to get through. There are moments, though, that the book is thoroughly engaging: when their mother decides they will run away from the Green Gang rather than succumb to their demands, and when the mother makes the ultimate sacrifice to help her daughters carry-on and when the INS starts following their paper trail.

Although the plot jumped forward quickly, ten years here, two months there, those were just words the author inserted. I know that May's character was supposed to be immature, she was the younger sister and always doted on, but I couldn't see that Pearl had grown-up either. The introduction of the uncles and the father of a friend from the past seemed like afterthoughts. The ending demands a sequel but I won't rush to get it though I'm sure I will read it.

About the Author
Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles.

Lisa talking about Shanghai Girls


Shanghai Girls Giveaway
If you want to follow Pearl's and May's adventures from Shanghai to Los Angeles, from rich to poor, the dilemma of "paper sons" and soft-bone disease, you can!

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Contest ends midnight, January 31, 2010.

Book provided by TLC Book Tours and Random House.