All the Flowers in Shanghai, by Duncan Jepson

I...I...I, I, I..I...I. I hated this book, and I don't usually say that. I truly could not wait to finish it and forget about it. But first, the general plot line.

Feng is a young girl living in Shanghai during the 1930s. She is the second of two girls and written off by her middle-class parents, who are focused on securing a strong (ie, higher class) marriage for her sister. Freed from any responsibilities, she spends her days playing in a nearby garden where her grandfather teaches her the Latin names of flowers and gardens. She is the polar opposite of her sister, who wears make-up, dresses well, and is eager to do everything required to secure a good marriage. After finding a good suitor and going through all the wedding preparations, her sister dies. To save the family face, Feng must marry the suitor, who she's only met once. The story follows her life and how she copes with this unexpected and unwanted marriage.

I randomly picked this up at the library, based solely on the cover illustrations and the fact that I had loved Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, despite all its criticism about failing to properly represent Chinese culture and foot-binding. I saw the word "Shanghai" next to a woman's picture and thought, "wow, maybe this will be half as good as the Snow Flower one. Silly me.

My first complaint is the writing style. I really felt like every sentence started with "I". I this, I that, and I this, too. It led to a limited sense of self-reflection on the part of Feng, and made it hard to bond at all with the main character. And she needs the reader to bond with her in order to justify all of the annoying things she does. You spend half the time going "Would you please just talk to your husband?" and the other half sighing. She comes across as a self-centered spoiled brat, which is extra frustrating because she starts out the book as a down-to-earth child.

My other criticism is that the author fails to convince you that he (yes, it's a he) actually how a young Chinese woman in this situation would feel and behave. One problem with the fact that her parents had devoted all their energy to the older sister is that Feng has no understanding of sex. Now that she's married, she's supposed to give the family an heir, and her husband comes to her room nightly. As he understands her inexperience, he takes several nights before actually having intercourse, and these nights drag on and on, not only for Feng but also the reader. (This is the part where you scream "Why don't you just talk to your husband?") I understand that a Chinese woman back then might have had minimal exposure to sex, but the author does a terrible job convincing you that Feng truly doesn't even know what a penis is for. So instead you struggle through pages and pages, mostly pitying her husband. When she finally gets pregnant, it's a huge sigh of relief.

I may try Lisa See's Shanghai Girls later on, in hopes of getting a better reading of how Chinese women survived in Shanghai before the Cultural Revolution. But for now, I'm off to read something completely different.