Shanghai Girls

by Lisa See

This is the kind of book I love to read—as long as I have plenty of lighter stuff like fantasy, science fiction, and easy reading in between. It leaves the reader with the feeling they have seen life through another pair of eyes, a book that gives a new layer to your perspective on the world. It is a reality-check book, like City of Joy, reminding us that people have lived and do live in ways very different from our own.

First a warning, however. This is definitely not a young adult book. It is very adult, with frank portrayal of rape and mention of physical relations. But there is no way that the true horrors of war and the expectations of Chinese women in this time period could have been shown without it. In other words, it is not gratuitous.

The book is historical fiction, following two sisters from their free and easy life in Shanghai right at the beginning of World War II, to their married lives in Chinatown L.A. over the next couple of decades. The author has done her homework and beyond; she does a phenomenal job pulling the reader right into the setting, and the characters are very real. The secret the sisters must hide and the dynamics between their personalities make a compelling plot.

While the ending is a bit of a hanger, I couldn’t think of a better way to end it, and the reader can walk away quite fulfilled.