Lisa See - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Both heartbreaking and heartbreakingly lovely immerses the reader in an unimagined world The characters and their surroundings come vibrantly alive.

The Denver Post

A provocative and affecting portrait.

Chicago Tribune

Riveting a story that informs as it charms.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Magical, haunting fiction. Beautiful.

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Fifth Book of Peace

A marvel of imagination so mesmerizing that the pages float away and the story remains clearly before us from beginning to end.

Amy Tan, author of Saving Fish From Drowning

An engrossing and completely convincing portrayal of a woman shaped by suffering forced upon her from her earliest years, and of the friendship that helps her to survive.

Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha

[Sees] best book yet a beautifully drawn portrait of female friendship and power.

The Seattle Times

This haunting, beautiful and ineffably sad tale of longing, so intense as to be taken beyond the grave, is written in Sees characteristically strong prose. Extraordinary breathtaking.

Baltimore Sun

If there is a sleeper summer hit, it should be this story, which draws you into a time not as ancient as it seems, touching your heart and breaking it at the same time.

USA Today

[A] beautifully drawn portrait of female friendship and power.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Sees engrossing novel details the deeply affecting story of lifelong friends. See adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Sees fluid language, her re-creation of Lily and Snow Flowers world, is engaging.

San Francisco Chronicle

Taut and vibrant a richly textured account of how women might understand their own lives a keenly imagined journey into the womens quarters.

Kirkus Reviews

Stirring.

Vogue

Sees writing is intricate and graceful, and her attention to detail never wavers, making for a lush, involving reading experience.

Booklist

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is fascinating.

The Indianapolis Star

Shanghai Girls

Peony in Love

Dragon Bones

The Interior

Flower Net

On Gold Mountain

This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright 2005 by Lisa See
Reading group guide copyright 2005 by Random House, Inc.
Excerpt from Shanghai Girls copyright 2009 by Lisa See

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
R ANDOM H OUSE R EADERS C IRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., in 2005.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
See, Lisa.
Snow flower and the secret fan: a novel / Lisa See.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-474-6
1. Reminiscing in old ageFiction. 2. Female friendshipFiction. 3. WomenChinaFiction. 4. Married womenFiction. 5. Older womenFiction. 6. FootbindingFiction. 7. ChildbirthFiction. 8. SecrecyFiction. 9. ChinaFiction. I. Title.

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IN THIS NOVEL, I HAVE FOLLOWED THE TRADITIONAL CHINESE style for rendering dates. The third year of Emperor Daoguangs reign, when Lily was born, is 1823. The Taiping Rebellion started in 1851 and ended in 1864.

It is believed that nu shuthe secret-code writing used by women in a remote area of southern Hunan Provincedeveloped a thousand years ago. It appears to be the only written language in the world to have been created by women exclusively for their own use.

I AM WHAT THEY CALL IN OUR VILLAGE ONE WHO HAS NOT yet dieda widow, eighty years old. Without my husband, the days are long. I no longer care for the special foods that Peony and the others prepare for me. I no longer look forward to the happy events that settle under our roof so easily. Only the past interests me now. After all this time, I can finally say the things I couldnt when I had to depend on my natal family to raise me or rely on my husbands family to feed me. I have a whole life to tell; I have nothing left to lose and few to offend.

I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one and the same. For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for meas a girl and later as a womanto want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life. I dreamed that my mother would notice me and that she and the rest of my family would grow to love me. To win their affection, I was obedientthe ideal characteristic for someone of my sexbut I was too willing to do what they told me to do. Hoping they would show me even the most simple kindness, I tried to fulfill their expectations for meto attain the smallest bound feet in the countyso I let my bones be broken and molded into a better shape.

When I knew I couldnt suffer another moment of pain, and tears fell on my bloody bindings, my mother spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me to go one more hour, one more day, one more week, reminding me of the rewards I would have if I carried on a little longer. In this way, she taught me how to endurenot just the physical trials of footbinding and childbearing but the more torturous pain of the heart, mind, and soul. She was also pointing out my defects and teaching me how to use them to my benefit. In our country, we call this type of mother love teng ai. My son has told me that in mens writing it is composed of two characters. The first means pain; the second means love. That is a mothers love.

The binding altered not only my feet but my whole character, and in a strange way I feel as though that process continued throughout my life, changing me from a yielding child to a determined girl, then from a young woman who would follow without question whatever her in-laws demanded of her to the highest-ranked woman in the county who enforced strict village rules and customs. By the time I was forty, the rigidity of my footbinding had moved from my golden lilies to my heart, which held on to injustices and grievances so strongly that I could no longer forgive those I loved and who loved me.