Customer Reviews

Letter from Peking

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, the author tells us about deep hearted love. I was very pleased to see her view of love especialy because we live in the world which is mostly concernd about only the surface. Well, I can't say if it was really a right thing that the mother had to intervene her son's relationship with the first girl friend. But I personally do think there is something we need to learn from her opinion about love. Those who are deep hearted will like this book.

I was originally forced to read this novel in high school and didn't expect to like it as I hadn't liked The Good Earth. Letter from Peking turned out to be one of the most deeply moving love stories I've ever read and I still remember it after all these years. It goes deeply into both the joy of love and the high price you have to pay and, quietly in the background, the quiet miseryof life without love. At the beginning of the story, an American woman living with her teenage son in New England is waiting with a desperate grief and hope for a letter from her husband in Peking. She had had to leave for her own safety when the communists took over. Her Chinese husband could not bear to leave his homeland. He loves China too much to be separated from her even though that means separation from his beloved wife and son. The story then recalls their meeting and decision to marry despite the problems of an interracial marriage. It becomes a beautiful tribute to and description of a loving marriage that is eventually torn apart by the greater love of country. Meanwhile, the teenage son is growing up and falling in love with a shallow, pretty girl. The mother has to agonize over whether this marriage will be a tragedy. They love each other now, but is this a healthy love? Can it survive the pressures put on an interracial marriage when it seems more infatuation than love? This question haunts much of the novel as the mother agonizes over what to do. She makes a courageous and painful decision to intervene in a way that will resolve the relationship even at risk of alienating the son she adores. Meanwhile, the long-awaited letter from Peking has arrived. This book is a must read for anyone who likes a genuinely mature love story. I might add that, believe it or not, it has a happy ending. The happy ending is again based on the happiness that maturity, love, acceptance and wise choices can bring. It's a shame it's out of print for this is a book well-worth reading and rereading.

A heart-rending tale of separated lovers, beautifully told. Especially timely read in light of the political turmoil in the current world scene. One can easily imagine this story being replayed time and again, as refugees flee war-torn countries, leaving behind family members who, through no personal fault, may never see their loved ones again. A story of courage, of perserverence. Find time to read it all at once if you can - it is almost impossible to put it down!

As a great fan of Pearl Bucks' stories, I was less pleased with this one. Elizabeth, a girl from Vermont, falls in love with Gerald, son of a Scottish college professor and his Chinese wife. Gerald never seems to be at all comfortable in his skin and seems to be constantly battling his two cultures. Elizabeth really forces marriage upon him, trying to overcome his initial reluctance with the strength of her love, and against the advice of her family, moves with him to Peking where they live happily and where their son Rennie is born.

When Communist forces begin the take over of China, Gerald sees no future for his wife and son under this regime and sends them back to America. It's really a sad book with Elizabeth never ceasing to miss Gerald and raising her son alone. M/s Bucks' prose is stilted in the extreme in this book and while this style reads well for conversation between Chinese people, I can't believe that any American woman would talk like this, even after spending 10 years in China.

Pearl Buck attempts to set across several themes - ties to country and to family, wisdom somehow being passed down from the ancestors, some sort of odd idea of the sisterhood of women, and the beauty of first love that endures. Unfortunately, the result is a muddle, and, by the end of the book's first third, one may find oneself yawning at the 'voice' of a middle aged woman droning on and on about how wonderful her sex life has been.

Elizabeth, our heroine and narrator, extols the beauty of nature constantly - whether it is to Vermont or Peking to which she is referring - and there is some naturalness in her vivid descriptions of sunrises and ewe lambs chewing the grass. Otherwise, she seems unreal - a vague woman who seems to think herself hugely wise.

The situations and dialogue are sadly artificial. Elizabeth's sermons to her son make her sound more like an ancient sage than a mother; then, when she fears that Rennie cannot love a girl whose heart can 'only hold one cup' (this, apparently, was confirmed when Elizabeth met and judged her equally one-cup mother), she suddenly shifts loyalties and, with the sisterhood of women coming first, breaks her son's romance lest the girl not be 'protected.' Quite dramatic - and totally out of order for two teenagers having a brief romance while the girl is in Vermont for the summer.

The influence of ancestors is always appearing - and shifting. Rennie, Elizabeth's son, first looks like Gerald, then his mother, then has a Scots rather than a Chinese profile - and his perpetually changing is accompanied by an apparently inherited wisdom. At 17, he is an impeccable son and student, but still has some roughness around the edges. By the advanced age of 19, he is a mature sage, the immaturity vanished, whether through ancestral wisdom's penetration or the magic of his having found the woman whose heart's measure is on a par with his.

Though Elizabeth traces and retraces Gerald's reasons for needing to stay in Peking, it remained a total puzzle to me. No single idea was developed enough for the whole to make sense.

"Letter from Peking," a novel by Pearl S. Buck, is narrated in the first-person by its main character, Elizabeth MacLeod. Her narration begins from her home in rural Vermont in 1950. Elizabeth has been separated from her husband, Gerald, due to the poltical upheaval in China; he has remained in China to attend to his duties at a university. Gerald is the son of a Scottish-American and a Chinese woman.

As the novel unfolds, Elizabeth reflects on her past life with the absent Gerald. She also tells the story of her ongoing relationships with her and Gerald's son, Rennie; with Gerald's elderly father; and with other people in her life.

"Letter" is a fascinating look at how international political forces can act like a "tidal wave," affecting families profoundly. The book is also an intimate look at a marriage from a woman's perspective, and a compelling study of a biracial young man (Rennie) who is struggling with his dual heritage while making the passage to manhood. There is also an element of political intrigue and danger, although the focus of this book is family relationships and emotions.

Although the dialogue is occasionally a bit stiff, overall I was very impressed by the subtle artistry of Buck's prose. She has an eye for details: an old man's dragon-headed cane, the birth of a calf, "arching maple trees blazing with autumn fire," etc. At its best she attains a delicate, economical poetic prose. This is a fine novel by a writer who, in my opinion, deserves more attention.

Pearl's greatest strength is development of character. We get to know her characters the same way one gets to know people in our lives, by listening to them and watching them react under trying circumstances. I cared very much about her characters in this novel. She has also managed in this instance to spin a tale with an aspect of suspense in the plot.

Buck's language is spare and beautiful; she doesn't try to impress the reader with obscure vocabulary just to prove she is really a writer. Her novels have a certain poetry when read aloud.

Love is a recurring theme in Buck novels. To her, love is about finding, if not THE right person, a right person; not settling for whomever comes our way. To her, life is not lived as fully and joyfully if we don't wait for someone who matches us intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. In fact, it can be empty and joyless. Once found, that rare sharer of our self must only with the greatest reluctance be let go. Buck is not a skater on the surface of life; she plunges into the depths of it with all her being . . . and she takes us with her. Her ideal of love is deeper than the romance novel variety. (In practice, however, I wonder how often it would work -- or would 2/3 of us still be looking for our mate at age 70?)

I read Letter from Peking when I was about 14, after The Good Earth, and, rereading it recently in middle age, I had the sense of coming back to my self, reawakened with all the dreams of adolescence and an intense awareness of the beauty in life. Just what I needed after all the starkly realistic, shallow relationships in movies and books these days.

With a moving story of deep long distance love, Pearl S. Buck weaves an emotional tale of a couple separated by Revolution in China. I found the love shared by the couple to be power, especially alongside the tales of revolution and the heartbreak it can cause for those individuals who unfortunately land on the wrong side of the revolution. My one major complaint with Buck's novel is the difficulty I found in sympathizing with the main characters. As much as their love story was moving, I was turned off by the superiority they felt because of their great love for each other. Doesn't great love begat gratefulness in place of superiority?

This is a typical Pearl Buck story with polished writing, fascinating images and a haunting love story. The story takes place during the start of Communist China and concerns a Chinese man and an American woman, who are married. The couple originally live in China, where the husband is a professor at a great Chinese university. The man has historical roots in the beginning of Communist China. The woman is a bewildered American woman who is parted from her husband by the very same communism. The story is from the woman's perspective and details her lonely life back in her native New England, the growth and travails of her half-Chinese son and how all learn to live with new realities.

Like all Pearl Buck novels, the language is impeccable, the voice articulated and the reader wishes it were longer.

This book is chraming and inspiring. I highly recommend that you get your hands on this book. Very good book.