Another review that got deleted. Why, Goodreads, why?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I'm going to do this review a little bit differently because I don't have a whole lot to say, and the easiest thing to do when this happens is to form lists. So while it goes against all of my other review writing, it will help me talk about specific points.LIKES:-I loved the story in this novel. It was epic and sweeping and it may me feel a whole range of different emotions. I couldn't wait to see what happened next.-I also enjoyed the writing style. I enjoyed the simplicity and yet it still had the ability to paint a mesmerizing picture.-This may be a dislike for some of you, but this book was extremely depressing. It was so oppressive and just made me really sad while reading it. That's not always a great thing, but here it was. I think the author accomplished what he set out to do, which was to capture exactly how hard it was for Asian women, and in a lot of cases still is today.-The protagonist made me angry. There were times when I loved her and wanted to rescue her from her horrible fate, but there were also times when I thought that she was just as bad as the rest of them, if not worse. It's very hard to root for a protag who makes bad decisions, but again, I think this is what the author was after.DISLIKES:-Lack of detail in the scenery. Except for wherever it was that Feng was living, you had literally no idea what was going on in the outside world. It was implied, but I would have liked some more detail into what life was like back then. There was some at the end, and now on thinking back to the book, that was one of my favorite parts. I just felt everything was memorable. And that's because all the story components were there.-Towards the end, there was a major jump forward in time and I didn't like this. I would have much preferred this to be a longer book with twists and turns. It had the potential to be one of those epic cultural reads like Snow Flower and Memoirs, and I think it missed the mark by a hair. It skipped a bunch of years and I couldn't help but think I was left out of something. I rarely ever ask for a book to be longer, this may be a first, but here I felt like something was missing.-Final criticism? Character development. It was good, it just could have been better. I didn't find myself caring for the characters as much as I could have. This was a DEPRESSING book. I should have shed a tear and I didn't. And that's because I was missing a connection to the characters and all the tragedy that surrounded them.Still, if you like cultural reads, this is definitely a book you should pick up. It wasn't quite as good as Snow Flower, but it had a great story and it was definitely easy to read and easy to follow. It's a good story for people who think their life sucks and want to read about someone whose life sucks more. Hey, I'm just being honest. ;)
