Book Review #18

Book: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Age-range: 16 and up
Recommended: No

I love National Public Radio (NPR).  In Pittsburgh the radio stations are so random, they all play anything.  There's no oldies station or rock station, they will all play whatever they feel like.  This makes listening to the radio there an irritating experience for me, so I would listen to NPR pretty much all the time.  One thing I love about them is the interviews they do with authors.  I have learned about a lot of really wonderful books on NPRs shows.

Shanghai Girls is not one of them.

Not that it wasn't well-written, because it absolutely was.  Her prose is lyrical, descriptive and beautiful.  So much so that there were times when I would skip whole passages just because I as curious what would happen next.  And, as with any well-written book, she inspired some good writing in me that I probably would not have done otherwise.

I heard an interview with the author, Lisa See, on NPR and I heard why she wrote the book.  Unfortunately, I didn't learn enough about the actual plot to realize it was not a book for me.  It wasn't until three-fourths into the book that I realized it.  By then it was too late and I just finished it.  But I did not enjoy the ending.

Pearl and her sister May are beautiful girls in Shanghai.  Fate intercedes and their lives go from glamorous and fun to absolutely wretched... and then the book ends.  Seriously, it was so depressing to see how far they fell and it wasn't even a justified fall.  I think the author was making a point about the average Chinese person that came to America in the 1940s, but it was not good.  The story is told from Pearl's point of view and she goes from being an interesting, lovable character to being a superstitious, somewhat crazy (if you ask me) woman who's terrified of everything.  And NOTHING good happens to her.

So skip this book, but do look more into the history of beautiful girls in Shanghai in the 1930s.  Fascinating!