Customer Reviews

Three Sisters

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Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu is a tragicomic novel, a tongue-in-cheek parody, about three sisters in the Wang family living in Wang Family Village in rural China. "Many rural villages are populated mainly by families with the same surname ." The novel opens in 1971 and ends in 1982. It is structured like three novellas though it is described by the publisher as a novel. The book's strength, and also its weakness, is that it is primarily comprised of character studies without a lot of plot. This can make it less accessible to some readers. Throughout the novel, the author utilizes Chinese proverbs, aphorisms and adages to make points. It comes out sounding something like a Greek chorus, adding a comic element to what is often heart-rending or calamitous. It is also very culture-specific which makes it harder to access for many readers.

The background is Maoist China following the Cultural Revolution. The position of women is lowly. They have no say in their lives except through subtle avenues where they can make small choices that may have a large impact on their lives and those in their community. This is often achieved by how a salutation is given, who is addressed and who is ignored, and what gossip is spread among them.

The book opens in 1971 with the story of Yumi, the oldest sister in the Wang family. The family is comprised of seven daughters and one son. Yumi's mother has given up the care of her son to Yumi who takes her brother around the village with pride as though she were his mother. In essence, she is the head of her family. Her father is a philanderer and a drunk who has the job of commune-secretary. He falls from grace when an affair he is having with the wife of an active duty soldier comes to light. This impacts Yumi's marriage plans. She had been engaged to an aviator from a neighboring town but he pulls out of the engagement because of Yumi's father's disgrace. Yumi is a strong woman who has plans - she wants to be associated with power. She manages to become the second wife to a powerful man in another village. Though her heart is broken and she is filled with embarrassment and shame, she proceeds with her life, giving the appearance of "one of those intrepid women in propaganda posters, a woman who could charm any man and still look death in the face without flinching."

The second part of the book is about the third daughter,Yuxio. Yuxio is a flirt and is described as cunning and two-faced, like a fox or a snake. She and Yumi have never gotten along and she has never respected Yumi's authority. After her father's downfall, she goes to attend a movie and during the course of the film she is abducted and raped. Yumi does her best to help her maintain face in the village but is soon gone off with her husband to a new town. On top of the shame associated with the rape, Yuxio gets into a fight with one of her younger sisters that is observed by many in the village. The outcome of this fight is that Yuxio becomes a village outcast.

Yuxio leaves her village and travels to Yumi's home where she seductively entrenches herself into the good graces of Yumi's stepdaughter and husband. The next thing Yumi knows, Yuxio is living with her family. There is already a wedge between Yumi and her stepdaughter and this is widened by Yuxio.. Though Yuxio actually despises the girl, she fawns and acts obsequiously towards her. Yuxio tries to install herself into the good graces of various town folk but over and over she sabotages herself by her indiscreet and false pretenses. It doesn't take long for others to catch on to her back stabbing personality. Yumi becomes pregnant and Yuxio loses her power at home. By the end of this section Yuxio is in much worse shape than when she started. She has ended up fooling nobody, not even herself.

The third chapter in the novel is about Yuyang, seventh sister, and takes place in 1982. Yuyang has won a scholarship to a teaching college and gets involved in the intrigue of the school, working on underground intelligence. This consists primarily of keeping an eye on her fellow students and teachers to see who is fraternizing with whom and reporting these events to her superior. She has read a lot of Agatha Christie and feels up to the job.

The novel ends without pulling together the lives of the three sisters. There is no follow-up to the other two stories and no real connecting of them. That is why I consider this book to be comprised of novellas rather than considering it a novel. I think this book might appeal to readers who are familiar with Chinese literature and culture. It is not likely to have widespread appeal because of stylistic issues. I found it informative and interesting, at times laugh at loud funny, but I am sure that there is a lot here that went past me.

Three Sisters has been compared to such books as Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Empire of the Sun. While I enjoyed reading the other three novels, this novel was ultimately, very disappointing and boring. I couldn't wait to finish it just to be done with it. This novel centers around the Wang Liafang, a Party Secretary in a tiny village in China and three out of his seven daughters borne by his wife, Shi Guifang-"During the twenty years she was married to Wang Liafang she had presented him with seven girls, not counting three miscarriages." Their eight child is finally a son, a day that Wang Liafang has been eagerly anticipating for over twenty years. Unfortunately, the most amusing part of the book was when you read about all of Wang's extra-marital affairs. He basically sleeps with half of the women in town, while his poor wife is knocked up trying desperately to bear him a son. Everyone basically turns a blind eye to his actions until one day, when he gets caught sleeping with a soldier's wife. He is relieved of his duties as a Party Secretary (they decided that he crossed the line with sleeping with a soldier's wife while he was away at war, fighting for his country). The book then focuses on three of his daughters and how their life transpired after his "big" transgression: Yumi, his eldest daughter, Yuziu, the beautiful but stubborn third daughter (and natural enemy of Yumi), and Yuyan, the seventh daughter. The main problem with this novel is that there is no "heroine", no one you really want to root for. You sort of feel bad for Yumi, as she loses her first true love, but her conniving ways make you not like her. Same flaw with Yuziu. And worst of all, Yuyan's story is so boring you wonder why she was even selected. I do think the author is trying to relay several messages about love, sex, and how status/power effects the first two topics but I think it would have been more effective to tell ONE tale about the entire family versus isolating the tale of three sisters.

A very adult rated book that explores human lust, sexual awareness blooming in young adults, the intricacy of the Chinese culture of your standing in society marred by the stance of the Chinese revolution under Chairman Mao. Although the exact period is not spelt out in the novel, but you get a sense the people's revolution has been in place for a while, late 70's to early 80's, where the story follows one family, the Wang family, and the story really explores in depth the three of seven daughters: Yumi: the eldest, the one who had the responsibility of looking after the family and siblings and how her quick mind maneuvered to ensure the family's face is saved in on so many occasions because of her father's wondering eyes and her third sister who shared the same `wild' genes; Yuxiu: the third daughter who is her father's favorite daughter has to deal with the humiliation of an event that is considered a big no-no for Chinese girls, and then having to show humiliation when she escapes to live with Yumi, who has resurrected her life as a married woman to a senior general. Then you have the seventh daughter (7 girls and the 8th was the boy), Yuying: who managed to be blessed to have none of the responsibilities of her older sisters and was able to attend an elite school for budding teachers. Her tale follows her through the communist part approach to loyalty to the party, the need to sneak on each other that lead to the discovery of a relationship between student and teacher!
I am not sure whether it was the intention of the author to depict how women are treated in Chinese society as third class citizens or whether it reflects his unconscious thought due to his own up bringing? The treatment of women certainly comes across as being quite harsh, but descriptive to be interesting to read about their struggles and how they view themselves in a male dominated society and the importance of a male child to carry on the family name. this novel is not so dated in that it is that far removed from what is still happening in today's society. An interesting read.

This it hardly satire, witty or enlightening. A tragic tale of Chineese sisters under the Maoist regime, it details casual and criminal abuse, rape, and an ironic narrative of events that could have been a great view of life under communism in rural China. I say could of, because of the flat and callous way the tale is told. The guy that wrote this, Bi Feiyu, must be a monk in seclusion who has never known a mother, sister or wife at best and likely a mysogenist of the highest order in any case. He has no clue at to the female mind and how it works or to the complexities of feminine emotions in any culture. The main characters (female)are flat, unreal and unsympathetic. They are given no positive traits and even a brutal gang rape is accorded nothing more than temporary physical injury. The relationships of these dissimalar sisters to each other and to the other members of their households would have made for a facinating thread to bind the stories together but, again, the whole thing falls flat because there IS no relationship beyond the dry and hateful narrative of the author. Save your money, save your time. This book is best used to wrap fish.

I found the setting and characters interesting, as far as that goes. But it was unclear to me how the three sisters and their stories are connected, and the author fails to tie things up at the end. For that reason this one left a bad taste in my mouth.

This book felt like a less skilled knock off of Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston. Like Tan and Kingston, Feiyu tackles gender and power in Chinese culture. However his placement of gender at the forefront of the novel feels forced, and like you have read it before (and done better). I wanted to like this novel, but really struggled to stay interested.

Bi Feiyu portrays 1970s and early 1980s rural China through the stories of 3 sisters. The book is divided into 3 sections, each centered on a year in the life of one sibling in a family of 7 sisters and 1 son, whose father is the local party secretary. The first, Yumi, is the oldest daughter who matures quickly having to care for her younger siblings and deal with her father's philandering ways. She also struggles to marry appropriately, but happiness is not a high priority. The second section, Yuxiu, is the story of the 3rd daughter, who is portrayed as a seductress and fox. Yet, her plans for success tend to backfire, leaving her worse off than when she started. The 3rd section, Yuyang, is about the 7th daughter and set 10 years later than the first two. She won a place at a teacher's college, and it is about her efforts to come into her own person. As with so many novels set in communist China, individuals encounter equal measures tragedy, triumph and endurance. The liberal use of Chinese sayings adds to the entertainment in this book. Bi Feiyu has opened a window into women's lives that fascinates and informs simultaneously.

Boring, morose, and self pitying, this is the kind of fiction that earns man booker derived awards.

Oprah book club admirers will love this, but I thought it stank: no plot, no depth of character development, no writing worth admiring.

Best part of the book is that it is a wonderful campaign against both imperialism and statism. Next time you want to bash liberty and justice for all, read this.

The three sisters in this book show the emotions of Chinese women in the l970's. The first sister, who is more or less the mother of the family, is grounded in her world of caregiver to her younger siblings. Her philandering father has used his position to have affairs with many of the town's women. When he makes the mistake of having an affair with the wife of a respected soldier, he loses his position and first daughter must try to regain the family's honor. She does so by marrying an older official and is into a loveless marriage.

Second daughter, beautiful and flirtatious, uses her beauty to advance herself in the world, only to come up short. She ends up unmarried and a mother. It seems appropriate for her to come to this end. She has manipulated her way into this condition and bears the fruit of her ways.

Third sister's story seems disjointed from the other two. I don't understand where she ends up. The characters around her seem to dominate this chapter. We know more about the teachers than her. The author must have had something in mind but we never know what it is. I enjoyed the book until this last part. I was left with a feeling of disappointment that he didn't give us a true ending.

Bi Feiyu has the eye of a filmmaker -not surprising given his long involvement in entertainment - and it shows in this novel of three sisters living in one rural Chinese family in the early days of Mao's revolution. Feiyu's writing is lyrical and crisp, delineating with an unwavering eye the dynamics of old traditions butting up against the new order in the lives of one Chinese family. The novel is divided into 3 parts, each limning a portrait of one sister in the line up of 7 girls, plus one lone boy. The novel is set in 1971 and tells the story of Wang Lianfang, a party worker who squanders his small degree of power when outrageous womanizing lands him in the bed of a respected soldier's wife, and he is stripped of his rank. His family must figure out ways to survive in an increasingly hierarchical Mao ordered world, and the story of eldest daughter Yumi unfolds. From Yumi's story of love lost and family honor regained, the story of the second daughter, Yuxiu springs. Unlike her composed elder sister, Yuxiu is a "fox spirit" and flirt who learns to manipulate everyone and thing in her environment, until she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. A decade later, youngest sister Yuyang is poised to escape a dreary fate when she's accepted by a school in Beijing, but she, too, has a story that ends just short of heartbreak.

Feiyu is particularly successful when he is honing in on the qualities that make each sister being profiled unique -her struggle to find her place in the family, and make her way in a changing world. He is far less successful in weaving together the 3 stories into anything approaching a coherent whole. But the writing is lovely, the sense of place he achieves feels spot on, and Three Sisters is ultimately a journey well worth taking.