Book Review: The Demon Who Peddled Longing by Khanh Ha

The Demon Who Peddled Longing

Title: The Demon Who Peddled Longing by Khanh Ha
Published November 21, 2014; Underground Voices
Genre: multicultural fiction, literary fiction

Opening sentences: Sometime in the night, the woman woke. The wind had died down and the rain had stopped and now she could hear something bang against the piles of the house. Sitting up in her cot, she listened.

Nineteen-year-old Nam of Vietnam, in the Plain of Reeds, takes a long journey after he is left homeless and without family when his uncle's fishing boat sinks in an accident, killing all the others on board. Nam finds employment with two different women in the flooded plain, fishing for them to earn his keep. He moves on to the coast and the seaside, in a determined quest to find the two brothers who had assaulted and murdered his cousin, his first love. His memory of his cousin drives him to try to exact revenge.

Lyrically descriptive, the book takes you to an unfamiliar land that gradually becomes more and more real. I was fascinated not only by the flooded plain of reeds, the taxing lives of the river fishermen, the intriguing preparation of fish and food, but also by the religious beliefs and the beliefs in spirits and ghosts.

This is almost a coming of age story as much as an odyssey, and a story of a young man's unholy pilgrimage to seek retribution for the wrong done to the young woman, his cousin. How he changes and matures toward the end of his journey is an intriguing part of the novel.

I enjoyed the writing, the plot, characterizations, and the cultural context. I heartily recommend The Demon Who Peddled Longing for its insight into character as well as for its fascinating story and setting.

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (2012, Black Heron Press) and The Demon Who Peddled Longing (November 2014, Underground Voices). He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and the recipient of Greensboro Review’s 2014 Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction. His work has appeared in Waccamaw Journal, storySouth, Greensboro Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Permafrost Magazine, Tayo Literary Magazine, Printer's Devil Review, Mount Hope, Thrice Fiction, and other fine magazines. Visit him at http://www.authorkhanhha.com
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Thanks to Virtual Author Book Tours and the author for a review galley of this book. See more reviews and the tour schedule. 

Book Review: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

The Ghost Bride

Title: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
Published August 5, 2014; William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: historical fiction, fantasy

"Tell you what," said Fan. " If you wish to go to the Plains of the Dead, I'll show you the way. For a price." (ch. 13)

The plot: A young Chinese woman, Li Lan, in colonial Malaya of 1893, is promised to the wealthy Lim family as a ghost bride for their dead son, so that he may still bring pride to his family.   However, the young woman is in love with the dead son's cousin, Tian Bai, who is very much alive.

She is distraught by the dead son's haunting her in her dreams and takes too much medicine by mistake, lapsing into a coma. Her spirit leaves her comatose body and enters a gate to the underworld, where she encounters the spirit of her dead mother in the Plains of Death. She also meets the ghost Fan, who is to play an important role in the outcome of her wanderings, and falls under the spell of a mysterious and handsome spirit, Er Lang. Er Lang enlists her help for a task in the underworld and later gives Li Lan the energy or qi she needs to stay connected and not to disappear completely from the physical and spiritual worlds.

I have perhaps given too much away about the plot, but be assured there is much more to the book than my brief synopsis.

My comments: I loved the imagination of the author who created this world of wandering spirits and ghosts, combining aspects of Buddhist philosophy of death, punishment, and reincarnation, with the Christian hell as seen in Dante's Inferno, and the Chinese traditional beliefs in the fate of the dead who are not buried and provided for in the afterlife by their living relatives.

Chinese mythology, Buddhist and faint echoes of Christian beliefs seem to mingle in this world that Li Lan wanders into and out of, with the help of other spirits. The plot also holds suspense, as Li Lan helps Er Lang to find evidence of wrongdoing among the underworld spirits, evidence to convict and detain them, depriving them of freedom in the underworld and freeing her from the haunting spirit of the dead son, her would-be ghost husband. I was also reminded of the Greek myth of Orpheus's visit to the underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice.

Recommendation: If you love fantasy, adventure, a mystery, mythology, romance and magic, this is a book I would recommend wholeheartedly. My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Visit the book's TLC tour schedule for other reviews.

Yangsze Choo is a fourth-generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. She lives in California with her husband and their two children, and loves to eat and read (often at the same time). The Ghost Bride was the Shirley Jackson Award Nominee for Best Novel (2013) and the Goodreads Choice Nominee for Fantasy (2013).

Connect with the author on Facebook or on her website

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a review copy of the book.

A Woman of Angkor by John Burgess

Teaser Tuesdays  is hosted by MizB; choose sentences from your current read and identify author and title for readers.  First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.

I: The Brahmin

Brahmin priests chart the turnings of the cosmic engine. They counsel princes and craft judgments of holy law. But concerning simpler things, such as getting where they want to go? They often need some help.

Perhaps that is why I felt no apprehension when I first caught sight of the priest that rainy season afternoon. All I saw was a man who looked to be lost, and my sympathy went to him. With two soldier-guards, he had arrived on foot at the tiny settlement in the Capital's eastern reaches that was home to my family at the time. Then he began a search for someone or something that wasn't being found.

A Woman of Angkor by John Burgess
Published 2013  by River Books Press
Genre: historical fiction

Goodreads description:
"12th Century Cambodia, birthplace of the lost Angkor civilisation.
In a village behind a towering stone temple lives a young woman named Sray, whom neighbors liken to the heroine of a Hindu epic. Hiding a dangerous secret, she is content with quiet obscurity, but one rainy afternoon is called to a life in the royal court. Her faith and loyalties are tested by attentions from the great king Suryavarman II. She struggles to keep her devotion to her husband Nol, s palace confidante and master of the silk parasols, symbols of the monarch's rank.

This novel revives the rites and rhythms of the culture that built the temples of Angkor, then abandoned them to the jungle. Sray witnesses the construction of the largest temple, Angkor Wat, and offers an explanation for its greatest mystery - why it broke with centuries of tradition to face west instead of east."

Based on the opening chapter, would you keep reading?

The Ninefold Heaven: a Novel by Mingmei Yip

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and The Friday 56 by Freda's Voice. Share the beginning of a book you are reading and select a quote from page 56. Include the title and author of the book for readers.

Title: The Ninefold Heaven by Mingmei Yip
Published June 25, 2013; Kensington
Genre: historical fiction

Prologue:

Three months ago, I was singing to loud applause in a Shanghai nightclub; a few days later, I became unexpectedly wealthy. But immediately I fled Shanghai in a fusillade of bullets to hide out in a run-down apartment in Hong Kong. 

Page 56: 

I felt a wave of anxiety. Was it coincidence this man asked for my signature song, or had he seen through my disguise?

Publisher's description:
 Mingmei Yip draws readers deeper into the exotic world of 1930s Shanghai first explored in her book, Skeleton Women, and into the lives of three unforgettable women: Camilla, Shadow, and Rainbow Chang.

When Shadow, a gifted, ambitious magician, competed with the beautiful Camilla for the affections of organized crime leader Master Lung, she almost lost everything. Hiding out in Hong Kong, performing in a run-down circus, Shadow has no idea that Camilla, too, is on the run with her lover, Jinying--Lung's son. Now their only hope of freedom lies in joining forces to eliminate the ruthless Big Brother Wang.

Despite the danger, Shadow, Camilla, and Jinying return to Shanghai. Camilla also has her own secret agenda--she has heard a rumor that her son is alive. And in a city teeming with spies and rivals--including the vengeful Rainbow Chang--each battles for a future in a country on the verge of monumental change.

From the opening sentences and the excerpt, what is your impression? See my review of the first book, Skeleton Women/ I'm looking forward to this follow-up.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book. 

Memoir: THE COOKED SEED by Anchee Min

Title: The Cooked Seed: A Memoir by Anchee Min
Published: May 7, 2013; Bloombury USA hardcover

The date was August 3, 1984. It was China's midnight and America's morning. I was about to drop out of the sky and land in Chicago. What made me scared and nervous was that I didn't speak English and had no money. The five hundred dollars I had folded in my wallet was borrowed. But I could not let myself be frightened. I was twenty-seven years old and life had ended for me in China. I was Madame Mao's trash, ..., which meant that I wasn't worth spit. For eight years, I had worked menial jobs at the Shanghai Film Studio. I was considered a "cooked seed" - no chance to sprout. (opening paragraph from the Advance Reading Copy)

Publisher's description:
In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path.

It is a hard and lonely road. She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, keeps herself afloat working five jobs at once, lives in unheated rooms, suffers rape, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly and divorces.But she also gives birth to her daughter, Lauryann, who will inspire her and finally root her in her new country. Min's eventual successes- her writing career, a daughter at Stanford, a second husband she loves- are remarkable, but it is her struggle throughout toward genuine selfhood that elevates this dramatic, classic immigrant story to something powerfully universal.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB; choose sentences from your current read and identify author and title for readers. First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. Opening sentences in a book can help readers decide if the book is one they would continue reading. 

Based on the opening paragraph of The Cooked Seed, would you keep reading?

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of this book. 

Dancing to the Flute by Manisha Julie Amin:

 Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB; choose sentences from your current read and identify author and title for readers. First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. Opening sentences in a book can help readers decide if the book is one they would continue reading.

Opening sentences: "Kalu stood still, staring up in to the banyan tree, oblivious to the sounds around him or to the man resting against one of the tree's many trunks. Finally, spotting the perfect leaf, the boy began to climb."

Book description: “'Kalu picked up the flute by his side and started to play. The sound was deep and full, as if he were translating his thoughts into music.' 

Abandoned as a young child, Kalu, a cheeky street kid, has carved out a life for himself in the village of Hastinapore, India. Kalu has also found friends: Bal, the solitary boy who tends the local buffaloes, and Malti, a gentle servant girl, who with her mistress, Ganga Ba, has watched over Kalu since he first wandered into the small town.

 One day, perched high in the branches of a banyan tree, Kalu chooses a leaf, rolls it tightly, and as he’s done for as long as he can remember, blows through it. His pure, simple notes dance through the air and attract a traveling healer, whose interest will change Kalu’s life forever.

 Dancing to the Flute is a heartwarming story of a community, the transforming powers of music, the many faces of friendship, and a boy’s journey to become a man."

Title: Dancing to the Flute: A Novel  by Manisha Jolie Amin
Published February 5, 2013; Atria
Genre: literary novel

White Shanghai by Elvira Baryakina

"Would you teach me to drink tea," Nina asked.
"Without a doubt."
Daniel knew so much about Chinese and Japanese art. He could talk for hours about special ways of manufacturing bone china, arranging gardens,ancient poetry and ink drawing. He was a person of such rate talents that Nina wanted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. (ch. 18)

Comments: This period in Shanghai's history fascinates me. The city was overrun with refugees from all over the world, during the time when the Chinese themselves were undergoing similar hardships and political turmoil.

Book description:  A melting pot of different nations, fused by war and commerce, this was the Shanghai of the 1920s. The Great Powers are greedily exploiting China for its cheap labor and reaping the cruel rewards of the opium trade. However, as ships carrying the remnants of the defeated Russian White Army enter Shanghai, the uneasy balance of this frenetic international marketplace comes under threat.

Among the refugees is Klim Rogov, a journalist whose life and marriage have been destroyed by the Russian revolution - all he has left are his quick wits and a keen worldliness that will serve him well in the lawless jungle of Shanghai. He finds work as a reporter in a British-run newspaper, rubbing shoulders with international gangsters while defying the intrigues of sinister communist agents, clinging to the hope that someday he'll be reunited with his wife, Nina.

This complete English translation of Elvira Baryakina's White Shanghai reflects the greatest traditions of the Russian classics. The official website of the book is http://whiteshanghai.com. There you can find beautiful illustrations, maps, vintage photographs and much more."

Title: White Shanghai: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties in China by Elvira Baryahina
Published January 10, 2013; Glasoslav
Genre: historical novel set in Shanghai, Russia, and Bejing
Source: review copy from publisher/publicist

Other books to read about wartime Shanghai include China to Me, a partial autobiography by American journalist, Emily Hahn.

Author Khanh Ha, guest post

Welcome to Khanh Ha, author of the historical novel Flesh (Black Heron Press, 2012) set in early 20th century Vietnam. He gives us the background and inspiration for his book and the family history that impels this story.  He also discusses his upcoming and second novel.
Flesh

The Ideas and Inspiration Behind It

by Khanh Ha

Flesh, is set in Tonkin (now northern Vietnam) at the turn of the 20th century. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who witnesses the execution, by beheading of his father, a notorious bandit and sets out to recover his father’s head, and then finds the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.

A coming-of-age story of brutal self-awakening and also a tender love story, takes the reader into places, both dark and wonderful, in the human condition where allies are not always your friends, true love hurts, and your worst enemy can bring you the most solace. As its author, I was asked what inspired me to write about this specific subject.

There was an image formed in my mind after I read a book called War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin, which was written by a French military doctor. In one chapter he depicted an execution by capital punishment. The scene took place on a wasteland outside Hanoi. This bandit was beheaded for his crime while the onlookers, some being his relatives with children, watched in muted fascination and horror. While reading it, I imagined a boy—his son—was witnessing the decapitation of his father by the hand of the executioner. I pictured him and his mother as they collected the body without the head which the government would display at the entrance of the village his father had looted. I thought what if the boy later set out to steal the head so he could give his father an honorable burial. What if he got his hand on the executioner’s sabre and used it to kill the man who betrayed his father for a large bounty. However, it really started with a story within my family.  My mom told me that my grandfather was one of the last mandarins of the Hue Court, circa 1930.

At that time the Vietnamese communists were coming into power. They condemned any person a traitor, who worked either for the French or the Hue Court. So my grandpa was a traitor in their eye. One day news came to him that a communist gathering was to be held in one of the remote villages from Hue. He set out to that village with some of his bodyguards to punish the communists. Unfortunately, news leaked out about his trip. He was ambushed on the road—his bodyguards were killed—and he was beheaded. The communists threw his body into a river.

My grandma hired a witch doctor to look for his headless body. Eventually the witch doctor found it. They were able to identify his body based on the ivory name tablet in his tunic. My grandma hired someone to make a fake head out of a coconut shell wrapped in gilded paper and buried my grandpa on the Ngu Binh Mountain. The beheading of grandpa surfaced again while I was reading the decapitation scene in War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin.

I spend much, much time in researching before I write. I’m a perfectionist and the harshest critic of myself. I have to know everything about what I’m going to write—well, sort of—before I ever pen the first word. Indeed much research was done before I felt dead sure about writing it.

More than once I was asked if I’m currently busy with a work-in-progress.

Yes, I’m about done with my next novel. But I rarely talk about what I’m working on. It may sound like a hard-line stance. But well, I can give you a harmless description. When I was still a struggling young writer, I came across a very old Vietnamese magazine article written about a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Hue. He was already dead the year the story was published, circa 1966. Two years before I was born. A sketchy story whose facts were gleaned from the eunuch’s adopted daughter, that ended with a small halftone photograph of her portrait. I put the article away. But I couldn’t put the story away, even months after. It dawned on me then that it wasn’t the story.

It was the face in the photograph. I traveled to Hue, Vietnam in the summer of 1991. I was 23. I went with her image in the photograph and when I finally met her, the eunuch’s daughter, that image hadn’t changed. She was someone like a forbidden love to a young man half her age. The first time she gave me a glimpse of her past from her spotted memory, it was in a sugarcane field where two decades earlier, her lover—a young American—had died in her arms.

Thanks to the author for this very interesting post. For reviews of his book, visit Virtual Author Book Tours.

About the book:  
The title refers to temptation-the temptation of the flesh. But it refers equally to the obligations of kinship, the connections between us and those to whom we are related, even if we would choose not to be. 

Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years, he began writing short stories, which won him several awards in the Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. FLESH (Black Heron Press, June 2012) is his first novel (literary fiction).

Visit the author at: http://www.authorkhanhha.com

Thanks to Teddy Rose at Virtual Author Book Tours for this guest post by the author.

To see my July 26, 2012 comments on the book, visit my Review.

Sunday Salon: Books Set in Asia

Welcome to the Sunday Salon.

I was really happy to receive two surprise books yesterday, thanks to the publishers, both novels set in India.

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall will be released July 10, 2012 by Simon and Schuster. It's a mystery novel set in New Delhi. I've read The Case of the Missing Servant, the first in the series, and really enjoyed the main character, India's P.I. Vish Puri.

I received the ARC of Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes by Betsy Woodman, the first in a planned series of books featuring Jana Bibi, her chatty parrot, and her housekeeper, living in Hamara Nagar, India. The book will be released July 17, 2012 by Henry Holt.

I'm in the middle of reading
Mingmei Yip's Skeleton Women, a novel set in early 1930s Shanghai,
finished The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam, set in the Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and
finished The Fear Artist (A Poke Rafferty Thriller) by Timothy Hallinan, a thriller set in Bangkok.

I plan to write reviews of the above three but may not post two of them till their release dates in the U.S! These books are going to take some thinking to review; they are pretty complex, with complex settings, and complex situations and characters. But I think I'll enjoy doing it.

What's on your plate for the next couple of weeks?

Book Review: The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

"I love that you got it about the food," he said, "that you understood it, that maybe - I hope I'm not projecting - you might even be on your way to loving it." (ch. 14)

Title: The Last Chinese Chef: a Novel by Nicole Mones
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 4, 2007
Genre: culinary history, fiction
Rating: 4.5/5

My comments: Maggie McElroy, a food writer in America, is on personal mission to Beijing, where her deceased husband Matt worked on and off as a lawyer. Someone has filed a suit against his estate and she must find out the truth. She is also sent by her editor to interview chef Sam Liang in Beijing for an article. Liang is translating a culinary book with his father from the old Mandarin - The Last Chinese Chef.

In Beijing, Maggie's personal problems are balanced by her new interest in the history of Chinese cuisine as she learns about food used as a way to develop community as well as a way to ease heart and mind. She learns about the combinations of texture and flavor to provide various meals categorized as extravagant, rustic, or elegant. She also discovers the difference between Chinese American food, meant to be familiar yet exotic, and true Chinese food, with each dish different and unique.

I found the book very informative and learnt to appreciate the time, skill, and thought that goes into classical Chinese cooking. The special dishes that were once created exclusively for the Imperial family are now enjoyed by all. I myself am a great fan of dim sum, the little dishes of amazing variety that once only the Imperial family were privileged to eat.

Book description: Nicole Mones takes readers inside the hidden world of elite cuisine in modern China through the story of an American food writer in Beijing. When recently widowed Maggie McElroy is called to China to settle a claim against her late husband’s estate, she is blindsided by the discovery that he may have led a double life. Since work is all that will keep her sane, her magazine editor assigns her to profile Sam, a half-Chinese American who is the last in a line of gifted chefs tracing back to the imperial palace. As she watches Sam gear up for China’s Olympic culinary competition by planning the banquet of a lifetime, she begins to see past the cuisine’s artistry to glimpse its coherent expression of Chinese civilization. It is here, amid lessons of tradition, obligation, and human connection that she finds the secret ingredient that may yet heal her heart. (Amazon)

About the author: Mones, award-winning author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light, and a contributor to Gourmet magazine, ran a textile business in China for 18 years at the end of the Cultural Revolution. She lives in Portland, Oregon. For more about her books, visit her at Nicole Mones.

© Harvee Lau 2011

A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei

A Thread of Sky: A Novel by Deanna Fei
Publisher: Penguin; Reprint edition (March 29, 2011)

Publisher's book description: "As Irene Shen’s husband of thirty years was leaving her, she shut the door behind him and said, “Good riddance,” to the eye-rolling of her three daughters. But when he dies suddenly in an accident, her oldest daughter Nora withdraws to her high-powered Wall Street job and troubled relationship; her strong-willed middle child Kay heads to China to discover her family’s heritage; and the youngest, Sophie, a sensitive art student, is trapped at home until college starts.

With her family in pieces, Irene starts organizing a tour of mainland China for her three daughters, her poet sister, and her eighty-year-old mother. As the three generations of women tour China, from the Great Wall to downtown Shanghai, each woman begins to uncover secrets. And slowly find their way toward a new understanding of themselves and each other.

Partly inspired by Deanna Fei’s own travels through China, A THREAD OF SKY is a story about love and sacrifice, history and memory, sisterhood and motherhood, and the connections that endure."

About the Author: Deanna Fei was born in New York, and has lived in Beijing and Shanghai. A graduate of Amherst College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received a Fulbright grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn.

Book Review: Blood Hina by Naomi Hirahara

Blood Hina: A Mas Arai Mystery by Naomi Hirahara
Product Description:
In this fourth installment of Naomi Hirahara's highly acclaimed "Mas Arai" mystery series, Mas' best friend Haruo is getting married and Mas has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But then an ancient Japanese doll display of Haruo's fiancee goes missing, and the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To clear his friend's name, Mas must first uncover a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder.

My comments: Getting new information from books, whatever the genre, is part of the enjoyment of reading.  I learned about Japanese Hina dolls, which were originally made out of paper to be cast out to sea in a boat, a ritual meant to have the dolls take all the bad luck and bad actions of a person with them, making them the equivalent of a scapegoat. The dolls later became a symbol of good luck for children, the family, and the emperor. They are made of more costly material and brought out on March 3 every year on Hina Matsuri, the Girls' Day Festival.

In Blood Hina, the disappearance of two of the valuable dolls is linked to the absence of Mas Arai's friend, Haruo. Then there are murders that deepen the mystery. The use of many unusual Japanese words and expressions in Blood Hina made me stop to concentrate on the translation and meaning, and Mas Ari's own strong accent transferred into English distracted from the flow of the plot and action. I enjoyed the first half of the book but got bogged down in the second half with the introduction of  many different characters. The information about Hina dolls made the book worthwhile, but I would have liked a smoother reading experience.

I liked Hirahara's Snakeskin Shamisen, an earlier book in the series that also features the Southern California Japanese gardener and sleuth, Mas Arai.

Title: Blood Hina: A Mas Arai Mystery
Author: Naomi Hirahara
Publisher: Minotaur Books (March 2, 2010)
Genre: Mystery Series
Source: Library
Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, , Support your Local Library Challenge

Book Review: Petals from the Sky by Mingmei Yip

Title: Petals From The Sky
Author: Mingmei Yip
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Kensington; 1 edition (March 1, 2010)
Genre: Fiction, Multi-Cultural
Source: Library

Summary: Twenty-year old Meng Ning decides to be come a Buddhist nun, against the wishes of her mother. She travels abroad to study Buddhism and meets a young American doctor at a Buddhist retreat in Hong Kong. They become close and as they say, the rest is history. Or maybe not...Meng Ning must choose between the young doctor and her wish to emulate the life of a Buddhist nun who had influenced her during her childhood. The book takes place in Mainland China, Manhattan, Paris and Hong Kong.

Comments: I learned more about Buddhism from this novel.The story of the Buddhist nun, Yi Kong, Meng Ning's mentor who inspired her to study Buddhism, showed how women fit into the religion. I thought Meng Ning's story could have wrapped up sooner, however. The tension in her relationship between the American doctor Michael Fuller versus Yi Kong her mentor dragged on a little too long, though I enjoyed it as a love story and a story of a young Chinese woman's contact with the life and ideas of the West.

Author biography: Mingmei Yip grew up in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States in 1992. Her debut novel, Peach Blossom Pavilion, which tells the story of the last in the Chinese tradition of poet-musician-courtesans, was published by Kensington in 2008.

Her new novel, Petals from the Sky, was inspired by Mingmei's life since she befriended powerful Buddhist nuns in her youth and was once groomed to be one.(Amazon)

My rating:  3 1/2 to 4 stars.

Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, China Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge

Book Review: Kitchen Chinese: A Novel about Food, Family, and Finding Yourself by Ann Mah

Kitchen Chinese: A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself by Ann Mah (Feb. 1, 2010)

Summary: Isabelle Lee is forced to leave her job as an editorial assistant at a swank New York magazine and decides to try her luck in Beijing, where her older sister Claire is practicing law. The two sisters were never very close but Claire invites Isabelle to stay in her spacious modern apartment in Beijing, and helps her get a job as a food writer for an English language magazine, Beijing NOW.

Claire gives her advice on how to interview a famous Chinese film director:Isabelle feels like a fish out of water as she doesn't speak Mandarin well, has no friends in the city, and still feels intimidated by her older sister, the successful Ivy League graduate and lawyer who has fulfilled all their parents' expectations, except one, that is. The sisters feel the pressure of their parents, even in far away Beijing, to marry a Han Chinese and provide grandchildren as soon as possible.

You don't know how I appreciate this, " I say in a rush.
In the car, Claire issues advice while simultaneously checking her BlackBerry, scanning the newspaper, and smoothing on another coat of lipstick. "Just be casual," she says, her voice as instructive as Dear Abby. "Men don't like it when women are too aggressive. Especially Chinese guys."

How the sisters deal with their parents, how Isabelle handles Beijing, her job writing on regional Chinese food,  and the attentions of Jeff, a Chinese rock singer, as well as the interest of a mysterious young American neighbor, Charlie, are the meat of the novel.

Comments: I loved traveling with Isabelle to places in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang to try out different styles of Chinese food. Her descriptions of the different kinds of "hot" in spicy Sechuan food made me want to try mapo tofu, bean curd cooked in hot chili oil. (The recipe is included in the back of the book, along with a few other dishes.)Here Isabelle takes her American friend Julia to breakfast in Hong Kong:

The conversation falters as we nibble dainty dumplings filled with shrimp peeping pale and pink through their translucent wrappers. We dive into plates of soy-sauce-scented rice noodles, unwrap bamboo leaves to reveal triangles of sticky rice....
"The food here is amazing. So fresh!" says Julia, her voice soft with awe. This is the best dimsum I've ever had. Ooh!" she exclaims, flagging down a passing cart. "Chicken feet!"

 I enjoyed Ann Mah's writing and the way she combined setting and regional cuisine in her story of the two Chinese-American sisters. I could relate to demands or expectations of parents, and the sometimes testy relationship between a younger and older sibling - these seem to be universal.

About the author: Ann Mah was born in California and lived in Beijing for four years, working as a dining manager for an English-language magazine. She was awarded a James Beard Culinary Scholarship in 2005 and now lives in Paris.

Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, China Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge
Cym Lowell: Book Review Party Wednesday

Friday Finds: Food and Mysteries

Found these the other day but as they deserve their own post, they are listed under Friday Finds, a meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Here's what I found while browsing at the library.

Kitchen Chinese: A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
by Ann Mah (2010). Mah was born in California, worked in Beijing as dining editor for a magazine for four years, won a James Beard Culinary Scholarship, and now lives in Paris. Lucky lady!

Blood Hina: A Mas Arai Mystery by Naomi Hirahara (2010). Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winner. She lives in southern California. In this mystery novel, her character Mas Arai must clear his friend's name after the friend's fiancee goes missing.


Paper Butterfly: A Mei Wang Mystery by Diane Wei Liang (2009). The author is a graduate of Peking University and lives in London. Mei Wang is a successful private investigator in Beijing and appeared in the first mystery, The Eye of Jade.

Also couldn't resist the books of two of my favorite mystery/thriller authors:

A Nail Through the Heart: A Novel of Bangkok by Timothy Hallinan (2008). This books features travel writer Poke Rafferty and his adventures in Bangkok. One of the follow up novels is The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller, to be released in August.

A Darker God: A Laetitia Talbot Mystery (Mortalis) by Barbara Cleverly (2010). Cleverly writes historical and archaeological mysteries in unusual settings. Her titles include The Last Kashmiri Rose, The Damascened Blade, and The Tomb of Zeus. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Book Review: The Time of the Dragons by Alice Ekert-Rotholz

The Time Of The Dragons by Alice Ekert-Rotholz, translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, historical fiction

The copy that I found in our circulating library at work is printed in 1958 by The Viking Press, a hardcover book of 468 pages. The novel is set in Shanghai, Norway, Bangkok, and Japan between 1925 and 1955.

Knut Wergeland, Norwegian consul to Shanghai in 1925, leaves for home in Norway before a new posting in Bangkok. He is returning home with his two daughters - Astrid, whose French mother has just died, and Mailin, his daughter by a Chinese woman who is deathly ill and so decided to give the child up.

Really interesting novel about the consul in Shanghai and his daughters who go back and forth to China before and during the Japanese occupation in the mid-1930s. Interesting also that the author warns about Asians in the future, especially "Japanese, Chinese, and Indians" and their future influence in the world. (This was written in 1958) . Her book goes into the Japanese role in WWII, but Germany is mentioned only briefly. She says nothing at all about the German quest for world power during the same war. Interesting omission, since this was written only 13 or so years after WWII, and by a German author who would have had fresh memories of the war in Europe.

I was ready to put the book down as a piece of propaganda but continued as the characters and their lives were such an interesting story.

Most of the book follows Knut's daughters - Astrid, Mailin, and Vivica, their lives and loves during wartime and after.  The most interesting of the daughters, the headstrong but vulnerable Vivica, is mistaken for a Chinese spy and is captured and interrogated in Shanghai by a Japanese officer, a former baron. The last part of the novel deals mostly with the love-hate relationship that develops and which continues in the mid-1950s when Vivica and the baron meet again by chance in Tokyo.

The author seems to be explaining the differences between East and West, saying the Americans misunderstood the Japanese and their culture in many different ways during their occupation of Japan after the surrender. A unique point of view by a German writer of both the victorious Americans and the defeated Japanese in post war Japan.

I love old books and old historical fiction and what they can tell us.

Challenge: 100 + Reading Challenge,

Japanese Literature Challenge IV: June to January

The Japanese Literature Challenge IV is hosted by Dolce Bellezza and requires only one or more books by a Japanese author, read between June 1, 2010 and January 30, 2011.

You can sign up by clicking on the Challenge link above or on the link to Bellezza's blog. There are already about five reviews posted that you can view.

I plan to finish
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
2. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari  Kawabata
3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International)  by Haruki Murakami

and a few more.

I managed two books for Japanese Literature Challenge III last year -

The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel by Yoko Ogawa,

                               and After Dark by Murakami.

I also read The Old Capital by Kawabata, though not for the challenge.

Sign up, sign up! You won't be disappointed in either the reviews or the discussions among the participants! Thanks, Bellezza, for another year of the challenge!