Pearl of China: A Novel [Hardcover]

Anchee Min (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

It is the end of the nineteenth century and China is riding on the crest of great change, but for nine-year-old Willow, the only child of a destitute family in the small southern town of Chin-kiang, nothing ever seems to change. Until the day she meets Pearl, the eldest daughter of a zealous American missionary.

Pearl is head-strong, independent and fiercely intelligent, and will grow up to be Pearl S Buck, the Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning writer and humanitarian activist, but for now all Willow knows is that she has never met anyone like her in all her life. From the start the two are thick as thieves, but when the Boxer Rebellion rocks the nation, Pearl's family is forced to leave China to flee religious persecution. As the twentieth century unfolds in all its turmoil, through right-wing military coups and Mao's Red Revolution, through bad marriages and broken dreams, the two girls cling to their lifelong friendship across the sea.

In this ambitious and moving new novel, Anchee Min, acclaimed author of Empress Orchid and Red Azalea, brings to life a courageous and passionate woman who loved the country of her childhood and who has been hailed in China as a modern heroine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As a girl in Maoist China, Min (Red Azalea) was ordered to denounce Pearl S. Buck; now she offers a thin sketch of the Nobel laureate's life from the point of view of fictional Willow Yee, a fiercely loyal friend. A lifelong friendship begins in Chin-kiang when Willow meets Pearl, whose missionary father converts Willow's educated but impoverished father. Under threat from hostilities toward foreigners, Pearl departs for the safety of Shanghai, and, later, to America for college, but she returns for her wedding to find that Willow is the satisfied founder of a newspaper and a very unhappy wife. While a changing China swirls around them, their friendship is tested as they both fall in love with the same poet. As the 1949 revolution looms, Pearl flees China, and Willow's husband becomes Mao's right-hand man, leading to a fateful showdown with Madam Mao when Willow refuses to denounce her lifelong friend. Though the setting and revolutionary backdrop are inherently dramatic, Min's account of an epic friendship is curiously low-key, with some sections reading more like a treatment than a narrative. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Pearl S. Buck, who grew up in China and became the first American woman writer to win the Nobel Prize, wrote that Chinese women “are the strongest women in the world.” Min, a prime example of an indomitable Chinese woman, has made it her mission to reveal the truth about the lives of women in China, including Madame Mao, Empress Tzu Hsi, and now Buck. Pearl first appears as a bright, inquisitive girl who conceals her blond, curly hair beneath a black knit cap to be less conspicuous in the Chinese town of Chin-kiang, where she lives with her courageous American missionary parents. We get to know Pearl through her best friend, Willow—impoverished, smart, plucky, and Chinese—as they share mischievous and harrowing adventures, a disastrous mutual love for the famous poet Hsu Chih-mo, and a string of tragedies yoked to the paradoxes and horrors of the Boxer Rebellion, China’s civil war, and Mao’s catastrophic rule. Exiled and heartbroken, Pearl achieves world renown by writing about China, while journalist Willow is brutally punished for remaining loyal to her “imperialist” friend. Ardently detailed, dramatic, and encompassing, Min’s fresh and penetrating interpretation of Pearl S. Buck’s extraordinary life delivers profound psychological, spiritual, and historical insights within an unforgettable cross-cultural story of a quest for veracity, compassion, and justice. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596916974
• ISBN-13: 978-1596916975
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as a movie actress. She came to the United States in 1984 with the help of actress Joan Chen. Her memoir, Red Azalea, was named one of the New York Times Notable Books of 1994 and was an international bestseller, with rights sold in twenty countries. Her novels Becoming Madame Mao and Empress Orchid were published to critical acclaim and were national bestsellers. Her two other novels, Katherine and Wild Ginger, were published to wonderful reviews and impressive foreign sales.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

166 of 179 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book (Instant Classic?) for Armchair Historians Who Love a Good Story, Told Well, March 18, 2010

By 

John P. Thiel "John T." (Astoria, Queens, New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pearl of China: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

NO SPOILERS! NO SPOILERS! I HATE SPOILERS AND HAVE PURPOSELY WRITTEN THIS IN A WAY THAT WON'T RUIN IT FOR YOU. NO SPOILERS! NO SPOILERS!

I'm stuck up when it comes to books. I only buy sure fire classics--after all there are so many of them which never disappoint--and other books that I am confident will be a great read. But once in a while I try and buy a book by an author I've never heard of if the reading of a random page or two in the bookstore grabs me. The latter was the case with Anchee Min's first book, Red Azalea with the added draw that it had a gold sticker on it saying it had won some notable prize and been signed by the author. I am the least likely to discover the next great author of timeless classics, but this time I may have gotten lucky.

How good is Red Azalea that it prompted me to read this, her third book about fifteen years later? After enjoying Red Azalea I lent it (which I rarely do) to a friend of mine who was studying at Boston University. The next day, when I visited her, as soon as I opened the door she threw it at me.

"Damn you!" She yelled. "I was up all night reading that book! I couldn't put it down until I was finished despite all the work I had to do! Get it out of here!"

Red Azalea being her first book, having learned English only six years earlier, and a memoir, I thought maybe it was just that her personal story was so rivetting and that maybe she had a lot of help in writing it, but Pearl of China proves that Anchee Min is a great storyteller, period.

In this book, she tells the story of Pearl Buck, who was the child of Christian missionary parents spending her childhood in China and an activist who was more familiar, loving, and patriotic of her second heritage in Asia than she was of her native one. I leave it to you to look up who Pearl Buck was on Wikipedia or whatever your favorite resource may be, but for the purposes of this review I will only say that Anchee Min tells her story in a way just as vivid as she did her own story in Red Azalea.

BOTTOM LINE: I ended up writing an essay for a class at Harvard comparing Anchee Min to other great Chinese-American Female Authors: Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. (I'm not Asian by the way, but I have lived in Asia). But I have to say this is great literature on its own, not simply within the genre of Asian-American Literature or as a work by a female author. It's a great book by an author who has written other great books, and readers should be pleased with themselves to have discovered her a such an early stage in her writing career.

Anchee Min is turning out to be one of my favorite authors, which is shocking because all my other favorite authors are long since dead writers of timeless classics of literature.

Overall, I love stories based on actual historical events and places, that take you to another place, culture, and time. And this book does that very effectively.

Whether you're a lover of great literature, of China, or of history and historical fiction, I'm sure you will love this book.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly cursory treatment of an excellent subject, February 17, 2010

By 

liat2768 "liat2768" (dallas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Pearl of China: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Anchee Min begins her story well and with a solid punch in introducing the desperate life of Willow and her family. Living a life of extreme poverty in China, Willow and her father follow the missionary, Absalom, and his church because they need the food they can get from him. This hypocritical patronage turns into a fierce loyalty and conversion for Willow's father and also for many of the people from their village. Willow meets, and is befriended by Pearl, Absalom's daughter and the two friends are cynical viewers of Absalom's fanatical mission to 'save souls' and Willow's father's scheming and unethical ways to obtain converts. The logic of how Willow's father goes about convincing people to convert is hilarious and these first few chapters are my favorite in the book.

However, when Anchee Min really gets into the historical aspect of the time - the rise of communism and the ejection of missionaries in China - this book is oddly subdued. The turmoil and violence of the time are barely communicated. It seems that as the girls age the pace of the novel becomes more and more hurried and Min squeezes events of huge magnitude into a few cursory pages. Willow's first marriage, abuse, escape and kidnapping is dealt with in almost a shadowy form where we don't really see her misery or feel for her pain. What could, and probably should, have taken a few chapters is quickly wrapped up and disposed of. The narration seems automatic and unemotional. I had a really had time finishing the rest of the novel simply because I kept thinking of how much better it could have been.

In sum, I think this story had the potential to be absolutely marvellous, but it falls quite a bit short.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 'Historical fiction....historical novels'....searching for the links...., March 5, 2010

By 

An Educated Consumer (Floral Park, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Pearl of China: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

"Historical fiction"...."historical novels" always leave me in a quandry.
Very often it prompts me to do some research to somehow extract the basis of truth.
Part of me understood the author's fascination with Pearl Buck and her attempt at creating the relationship and later friendship with Willow. Anchee Min took an opportunity to develop characters from her past.
What I found hard to follow, missing in continuity, were very often critical and crucial directions in the main characters' journeys and lives.
While detailed and graphic in some descriptions, relationships and hardships were changed, challenged, endured 'out of nowhere.'
It was as if pieces were missing.
Willow's later years were almost impossible to fathom, in light of her age, and horrendous treatment.
Perhaps, the book would have benefited from a bibliography that could have clarfied more.