Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

By Lisa See
Read: January 2009
Rating: Absorbing

This is a book I wanted to get my hands on quite a while ago. I found it, and a sister book, Peony in Love, at the Princeton Library sale.

Two girls, matched in age, names, sizes, and signs, form a friendship through a traditional contract. This relationship, laotong, is meant to last a lifetime, and can only be forged between girls who are so similar. Their families hope that the success of a laotong will bring the girls better marriage prospects–proof of their fidelity, among other traits. Lily and Snow Flower write to each other in the language of women, a special written form used only by the women of a certain region in China. Though their circumstances keep them apart, they are friends through and through.

Of course, there wouldn’t be a story if there weren’t conflict. Lily’s family is poor, but the diviner and matchmaker forsee that she is special, that she will have perfectly shaped lotus feet–the description of her footbinding is agonizing. The matchmaker finds her a laotong to help her rise into a good family. Snow Flower comes from a wealthy house with imperial connections, and the girls teach each other about their ways of life. When they marry, they ultimately switch places, with Lily the noble and Snow Flower married to a butcher, a profession that breaks Confucian taboos. As their lives diverge, they begin to misunderstand each other.

It’s not such an easy thing to read the womens’ language. It seems similar to Hebrew, which leaves out vowels, such a vital thing to our words. Likewise, nu shu is written phonetically, not as whole characters like mens’ writing, and so its context must provide more meaning. Women write and embroider, and sing the literature of their gender and their region. The language that keeps Lily and Snow Flower united across class and land and intruding families eventually leads to miscommunication.

The book is a confessional, written by Lily in her 80s about her life and her relationship with Snow Flower. She’s waited until she has safely outlived everyone who was alive through this with her.

What’s interesting about Snow Flower is that it breaks almost all the rules of writing from research. We’re told, time and again, never beat the reader over the head with the information. We know from experiences as readers that this is true.  No one likes to feel as though they’re being lectured to, or like the author didn’t really know what to do with all that information. It doesn’t feel like Lily is writing to peers, or children, or the ghost of her friend. Its like she knows her readers are foreigners, and she takes great care to explain the symbolism behind each action. Things I’m sure no 80 year old woman of the day would think needed explanation. It’s also not the smoothest writing. ”Sure, I had stepped from our theshold…” is not very reassuring.

And yet somehow, I was completely engrossed well before the halfway mark. I finished the book in about 3 days, and did wish for more.

The writing, when it comes to emotions and characters, is compelling and hard-hitting. Again, the foot-binding grips you and won’t let go. Lily is entirely candid about all her feelings and her faults, especially with the regrets and wisdom of age. She explains everything as she saw it then, and how she sees it now.

Flaws aside, I would definitely recommend it. The worst ‘and we did this to symbolize such and such, this be cause it would make things thus and so’ is in the first quarter. Get through that, and it’s well worth it.