I just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See. It was excellent! I can highly recommend this book and urge anyone interested in womens studies to read it.
It is the story of the lives of two women living in China in the 1800's. Their lives are bonded together through a Laotong contract, making them "old sames" for their entire lives. Their fortunes rise and fall and through their lives certain truths are revealed.
Now China in the 1800's was no place for a woman. As a young girl the torture would start with footbinding, which involved the painful breaking and binding of the feet. The binding itself killed many young girls. As you grew older things rarely improved. You were shipped off to a husband you had never met and your only worth was centered around producing sons -- girls were seen as worthless, so you didn't want to have them.
While men's lives were concerned with the outside world, women rarely left their homes. Their concerns were with their families and this leads the main character to great introspection. It is at her advanced age that she looks back on her life and tells us this bittersweet story.
This book was fascinating, and I read it with great intensity -- staying up much too late on a couple of nights. It was just the right book for me at the time. I had finished HP6 and was looking for something more intense and this really "hit the spot"!
Next up. . .
Eragon
by Christopher Paolini. I've heard a lot about this book, but will it live up to the hype?