Customer Reviews

Shanghai Girl

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

 

 

This is the kind of book that you will start and finish in a few hours. Fast, dynamic, intense and exquisitely written.
Yang introduces a new theme that many have yearned for. She gives the reader a glimpse of the glorious Shanghai days before the Cultural Revolution, through the eyes of Sha Fei, the daughter of one of the long forgotten aristocratic families of the old Shanghai:
"Images of the house remain in my head like snapshots- the red tiles on tapered roof, the gray steel window frames shipped in from Lyons when the house was built, fourteen foot ceilings, French windows opening to a verandah, the fenced in garden with Chinese parasol trees and a rose bush."
I particularly enjoyed the first part of the book in which Yang explores old and new Shanghai in great detail.
Bund bound...
Great work.

I have just finished reading Vivian Yang's, Shanghai Girl, and am amazed that it is the first novel of a young woman for whom English is a second language! Her use of idioms and slang are remarkable. She also has an excellent grasp of life, customs and politics in America. It is a very good read which opens the eyes of its readers to the incredible struggle that immigrants to our country must face when they leave their homelands to seek "a better life". My hat is off to all those whose intelligence, determination and drive lead them to the realization of their dream -- and this includes Sha-fei AND Vivian Yang!

This booklet never really got off the ground for me. It's to short and could have been much better if their was more to it. I waisted my free Prime borrowed book for the month on it. Not worth it. Try Lisa See's books or Amy Tan, much better story and characters.

I received a copy of Shanghai Girls for my birthday last week and I have brought it up to our country home to enjoy. From the moment I opened the cover till the very last page I could not stop reading this magnificent book about the nightmarish American immigrant experience as experienced by these two sisters. The story starts in 1937 and is full of the cultural richness of that era of history when time stopped with the sound of a rickshaw and its tiny laborer running through the streets with loose flapping shoes.
Twenty one year old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Both are beautiful, modern,
and carefree --until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that to repay his debts, he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America.Though inseparable best friends, the sisters also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. Along the way they make terrible sacrifices, face impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life -changing secret, but through it all the two young women of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are--Shanghai girls. Review by Virginia Degner, author of Without Consent to be released in the fall of 2010.