This summer-read recommendation of my bookclub was a dip in the lake on a 90-degree day.  The novel focuses on an 80-year-old widow writing of her life, a perspective that makes perfect sense once we readers become attuned to her early-20th century Chinese customs and familial responsibilities.  We laugh at competing "matchmakers." We learn how young females never leave their family's compounds until they journey in a flowered carriage to their betrothed for the wedding night. We're astonished by the roles of newly-married women in their husband's households, and marvel at how they maintain any hint of self, not to mention independence, within the bindings of tradition. And we grieve for those whose very welfare depends solely on giving birth to healthy sons.

 See's novel reverberates around the ancient Chinese custom of "laotongs [Old Sames]," a ritualistic lifelong bond of friendship/sisterhood between two young women. From the age of seven, Lily and Snow Flower maintain this friendship by using "nu shu [women's writings]," which were typically overlooked by the men as too inconsequential to matter.  But matter it does -- immensely.

At issue, too, is the culture of footbinding.  See helps us understand why anyone would choose to inflict or endure such pain, and why men found it so alluring. (If we presume such thinking could no longer exist in today's world, watch the 4+ inch heels flying off store shelves or talk to a podiatrist about hammertoes. But I digress...)

See manages to swim 1900's Chinese culture into the very personal story of Lily's humble beginnings, her mother's intent to give her a better life, and of a friendship that does not run smoothly, but that redeems.