A review by adelita18
Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I was very excited to read this book based on the reviews and book club recommendations I'd seen but felt let down by the hype. "Lady Tan's Circle of Women" only felt periodically engaging to me as it was punctuated by what felt like historical discourses. These moments of putting the plot into historical context did not feel natural to the plot most of the time and broke up the flow of the narrative. The other issues I had with the story below are very particular to the plot and I don't want to ruin the book for an interested reader:
  • The story goes into great detail about foot binding practices - including explaining the sounds the breaking bones make in a young child's foot. It was stomach churning. 
  • Additionally, it seemed like Lisa See wanted to write in a murder mystery part way through the novel and plopped in the murder of Spinster Aunt about a 1/3 of the way through the story. It's rapidly dropped and then resumed 14 years in the future, around 70-80% of the way through the story. 
  • The attempted poisoning of Yunxian, the successful poisoning of Meiling, the graphic description of Meiling's traumatic birth of her stillborn daughter, and the thorough discourse of Meiling's post-partum depression were exceedingly hard to read.
    As a reader who has suffered pregnancy loss, this was triggering. 
  • I disliked the hift in Yunxian's desire to have a concubine free marriage, then bought her husband 3 concubines when she felt like there was a breakdown in their marriage. Yunxian's rationale at this point: " he's earned the right to have the company of a woman who's only purpose is to entertain and provide treats in the bedchamber." It did not feel progressive and it felt very out of character for Yunxian based on her very clear thoughts and views on concubines throughout the first half of the book. Yunxian has many interactions with concubines throughout her life, and ends up becoming exceedingly close with her father's concubine, Miss Zhao, and Lisa See easily could have shown a more subtle shift in her views of concubines in marriage instead of having Yunxian throw in the towel and step away from the marital bed.
  • During the last 1/3 of the book, there is an outbreak of smallpox that felt very much like the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic lock down and hospital crisis. Grandmother Ru comes to help Yunxian treat those affected in their home and tells Yunxian they must make decisions on who is too sick to save and who is worth saving.
    This could be triggering for people who worked in healthcare and/or lost people during the Covid pandemic. 
  •  
    The discussion between Yunxian and her mother-in-law around 90% of the way through the book about the re-inquest into Spinster Aunt's death was frustrating. The buying of silence by the mother-in-law and Yunxian's father to protect the family honor was hard to read.
     
  • Lisa See uses some of her characters to voice opinions about variolation and reproductive rights that felt out of place for the time period. I'd like to look more at the writings of the time period to see if this is reflective of the time or if Lisa See was trying to address hot topics in society today through her historical fiction. 

That said, there were elements I did enjoy about the book. Grandmother Ru is a tour de force in the book and I liked her the most along with Miss Zhao and Meiling. I particularly liked how Grandmother Ru reminds Yunxian of her strength and to keep pushing toward the end of the book. The speech she gives is very moving and powerful. Overall, I thought the book was just okay. 
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