The writing killed this story. The 'prose' extremely clunky with such a disjointed feeling. The language switches in such extremes - from sickeningly sweet misplaced poetic attempts, to extremely coarse language utterly out of place. The narrative introduced scenarios completely implausible, almost as if trying to distract the reader from the poor writing. There is nothing seductive about this novel AND it is NOTHING close to Memoirs of a Geisha. Such a shame, the main protagonist Xiang Xiang was intriguing but her potential was extinguished almost from the beginning. Very disappointing. This book is a bit of a mix for me.It started off really promising, beautiful imagery, great narration, wonderful uses of adjectives to describe certain aspects of Buddhism, colours, clothes, people etc. So I was quite excited to see where the book would lead.It went downhill in the middle, the story became tiresome, unbelievable and to be honest I felt like the author just wrote whatever came to her mind and it didn't incorporate into the overall storyline of the book very well.However towards the ending it did improve although the storyline became predictable and seemed rush just for the sake of finishing the book off. I did like the fact that the ending was unconventional to a certain extent rather than a 'hollywood happily ever after' and I really ended up liking Pearl and Ah Ping. Another thing that annoyed me was the overuse of sex, of course a book based in the world of prostitution would involve sex, but I felt that the author just wrote some of the sex scenes/sexual description for the sake of it rather than using it to push the story forward or character development, plus I draw the line when the character is describing her mother's face as 'sexless' - that was a bit of a WTF moment for me. Ha!Overall I'd say, that if you're looking for an easy and quick read and something that is set in a different 'realm' then this book is ideal, however I wouldn't say it's my favourite or that I would pick it up again.
Do You like book Peach Blossom Pavillion (2008)?
Wonderful read. Learned a lot about high paid prostitution houses in China.
—sm170274
Really good read. Some mind be lost in translation, but I love it.
—fesih2007
