A glipse of culture

52 is my lucky number, so I had to find something good for my fifty-second book! I think I was pretty successful. Here are the stats:

Title: The Concubine's Daughter
Author: Pai Kit Fai
My start date: 9/19/10
My finish date: 9/25/10
Book count 52!/100

This work was fascinating. At times it reminded me of various other books I have read, notably Jung Chang's Wild Swans, or Kate Furnivall's The Russian Concubine series. Chang's book details the lives of three generations of Chinese women during the 20th century, which is similar to this work's chronicle of three generations of mother-daughter bonds. Chang's work, however, is based on reality while this is mostly fiction. Interestingly though, if you read the good stuff in the reader's guide at the back (always do this by the way, tons of good stuff there!) it does mention that the author draws much of his inspiration from real stories in the lives of his in-laws.

That brings me to the author. Interesting guy! Looking at the name, you would assume this work to be written by a person of Chinese or Asian decent. The author is British! He married into a powerful Hong Kong family and has spent many years immersed in Chinese culture. He even asked his family to choose a Chinese name for him, a process which is taken very seriously. So we once again have a situation in which an adult male caucasian is writing from the perspective of young female asians. Granted, this text is third person and not first, but once again, I find it mostly believable. The author's sense of culture and history is wonderful and the pages really come to life with exotic traditions and words. I found it very educational.

One small complaint I had, and it was very small indeed, was that the flow was just a little off. A little extra research (you know how I love extra research with my books) cleared the issue right up. The book can be divided into two sections, that of the mother's story and that of the daughters. It appears that the author first wrote the daughters story and published it as a stand alone novel in the UK. He then went back and wrote the mother's story, added it to the beginning of the novel and rereleased the work as a single unit. This answers the flow question. They feel like two different works, which makes sense if they were written at different times. Again, authors grow in their skill and the first half, which was written later, is decidedly smoother and more coherent. The second half suffers a bit from abrupt transitions and chapter endings and a general je ne sais quoi that isn't quite as great as the first story. However, these flaws shouldn't keep you away. The novel was still very entertaining.

Well, that is all I have for this one!
Keep reading!
Sarah