Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

  Shanghai Girls is about a pair of sisters and their lives together. It starts in Shanghai with Pearl and May barely being out of teenage years and working as models for an advertisement painter. Their father arranges a marriage for them to a pair of brothers to cover his gambling debts and get the girls out of the country. Then the Japanese invade China and incidentally Shanghai and despite being warned the girls fail to immigrate in time. There’s a lot behind their not wanting leave Shanghai and the book goes into depth as to their reasoning but I’ll just summarize it as stubbornness and being young. Actually being stubborn is pretty much the cornerstone to all the girls triumphs and failures.

  Eventually the girls escape China and make it to America and their “husbands.” Despite wanting nothing more than to go home, they eventually decide to make the best of their situations. As the book progressed into their middle aged, working family future, I really started to sympathize with Pearl, the older sister. It seemed like she was always covering for her sister. While May was always unhappy, her motives and her actions, while hinted at,  were never truly defined. The woman who wrote this clearly had siblings because she got the dynamic completely right. The attitude of protectiveness and slight animosity and the ability to say the one thing that will either do the most damage or fix everything between the sisters was perfect.

  The book was moving and wonderful and I can see this as a book I’ll read many more times to come. The only problem was the ending. After a very dramatic last chapter, the book ends with an unnecessary cliff hanger. It was clearly written to be followed by a sequel and that always bothers me. A good book, game, or movie should not have to resort to that kind of emotional black mail. The sequels should want to be read on the strength of the previous installments. Now I’ll get off my soap box because I have to go add the sequel to my list of books to pick up from the library.