Madeline
As a first disclaimer, Peony In Love was not my favorite book of Lisa See. I have previously written about a number of Lisa See’s books, including The Island of Sea Women, Snowflower and the Secret Fan, and Shanghai Girls. All of which I have really enjoyed and would highly recommend to anyone interested in historical fiction and Chinese culture. That being said, Peony In Love sits right at the bottom of these for me.
That being said, one of the things I enjoyed is understanding the superstition of the Chinese culture. See typically talks about Asian historical culture in a way few other authors describe it and I admire her about it. But Peony In Love opened up the world of the dead in traditional Chinese culture to me. How the dead continue to interact with the living and how, in the after life, the dead continue to have a strong hold on the living, which I had no idea about.
The Premise of Peony In Love
The book starts with a Chinese opera performing at Peony’s house. She has just been told that she will be in an arranged marriage but has not been told who this gentleman is. At this same performance, she falls in love with a man she has never seen before and in their brief meeting, she decides she cannot marry the man she is intended to. She is heartbroken and stops eating and sleeping and eventually dies, quite early in the book.
It is not until we are in Peony’s afterlife that she learns that the man she was intended to marry is the same man she has fallen in love with. She then goes down the path of needing him to marry her even though she is dead so they can be together in the afterlife. This leads her to communicating to the living that this needs to happen and they get the message.
She then follows him through his various marriages after her death. Through these marriages she is able to create children with his other wives as they too are bound to her sole. One of his wives accept her while the other one will do whatever is in her power to keep Peony’s spirit away from her family and her home. But Peony will not live without her love, during or after her death.
Final Thoughts
As stated in the introduction, I am not a huge fan of Peony In Love. I find other Lisa See books much more engaging and much more interesting. That being said, I appreciate her attempt at explaining the belief of the afterlife in traditional Chinese culture. Although I will not be recommending this book as a “must read” I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about traditional Chinese culture around the afterlife.
