I listened to the audiobook (realized after the fact that it was an abridgement, so that was a little disappointing), and I thought the narrator did a good job, though not super memorable for me personally.

The story was interesting and it affected me somewhat strongly, I think because I listened to the entire book in one day. One part that stuck out to me was the foot binding, which was described thoroughly but in a matter-of-fact way. Yes, there was emotion that the main character and her relations also felt, but I thought it was a good choice on the author's part to not pass judgement on this part of history. The actions of the mothers were simply 'what was done' and there was no time that I can remember spent on any sort of social commentary from a modern day perspective. This helped immerse me into the time of the story.

Also, this was the author's presentation of how the marriages for the two girls happened, so I thought it was interesting that there was not observations as to how things were done. The book was framed as a very old Lily was telling the story of her life, esp how Snow Flower fit into her life. Though Lily was not telling this story from today's time frame, the author could have inserted how social ideas on some of the concepts brought up (foot binding, how marriages were arranged) had changed over the course of Lily's life. So we would have seen how things were in Lily's childhood, then how they were done/thought of at her old age, and also have a chance to compare to today. It could have been interesting, though perhaps that may have bogged down the story.


I felt that Lily was justified in her feelings of betrayal when she found out about Snow Flower's life between the girls' weddings. I was pleased when they resolved to remain good friends and Lily gets past it, though I later wondered if that basically was a crack in the pot, and despite gluing it back together, that crack was always still there and visible.

I didn't completely understand why Lily got so upset when Snow Flower said she would basically take a break from Lily and hang with the other village girls. I had not gotten the impression that that was Snow Flower's way of saying that she valued Lily less or wanted to quit their friendship. So this was what had been alluded to multiple times as being the horrible thing that happened that was Lily's fault that had ruined everything, and I just didn't see it that way.
I'm also not sure what was cut out of the original text to get the abridged version, but this section was lacking to me. Lily gets the fan and interprets the message as a diss/goodbye, then I felt like there was minimal exposition of passage of time. There was the burning of Snow Flower's stuff and the party where Lily's a b*tch, then suddenly it was 8 years later. I would have liked more in this area, even if that had been more pining/anger/hurt.

As for the ending, I'm glad that Lily comes to Snow Flower at the end and they have some time together, but Lily acknowledges that she never apologized and felt bad about that, and her attempts at reparations to Snow Flower's family came across as 'meh' to me.
I'm not sure what the moral of this story was, as it's pretty sad all in all. I guess the point was to not be a jerk and ignore your best friend for 8 years because you misinterpreted a gesture/comment? That you should always be loyal and true to your BFF because you never know how long you have? Also, there was a lot of subtext about mother figures, and I felt that this was not well developed, or at least not paid off. That may have been edited out of the abridged book, but I would have liked more on this-- the moral I was left with was that even though Lily didn't love her mother and thought she was a bad one, Lily was sort of destined to act like her anyway....?
The resolution of the book being that at least Lily's and Snow Flower's grandchildren are together and that their blood is combined in future generations was a nice touch but little comfort. Lily seems to consider living to such an old age a punishment for her actions against Snow Flower, which I don't really think was the best feeling to end on.


Overall, I enjoyed the book, thought it was a look into a time of history and place that I know almost nothing about. I would recommend it.