Fun story: I heard about this book because I watched The Descendants. Yep. Haha, well, actually, the trailer for the movie appeared on The Descendants DVD, and the story seemed right up my alley, so I checked the book out at library. And I have no regrets.

SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN is engaging, engrossing, lyrical, and heart-wrenching. With a wave of a fan and a snap of bound feet, the reader is hooked. See keeps up a steady, period-specific voice throughout the novel, and I ate it up like caramelized taro. It was fascinating to step into the closed Confucian inner realm of women and the home. It was beautiful and comforting to see how, even though women nominally are a "useless branch" of families, they still have power, voice, desire, and choice. It was an inspiration how the women of the novel band together to survive the grief of their lives, to sing and create and be despite all the misogynistic rhetoric. Like...wow. Talk about resilience.

There are some first(ish) novel mistakes, such as tendency to show off historical research, but they were few and far between. I was too in love with the nu shu secret writing and the female friendships to really care. Speaking of the friendships, there are some shades of LGBTQIA to the narrative. Lily, the narrator, can be read as homoromantic asexual, as she has a very deep and explicitly loving bond with Snow Flower, but zero interest in "bed business" as she likes to call it. Snow Flower is harder to pinpoint, but she does love Lily and her husband, so a case can be made for pan or bi. I'd also like to add a trigger warning for body horror and domestic violence.

Overall, though, such an amazing and beautiful read. I'm excited to check out See's other books.