Book Group


Our book group normally meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:30 pm.

Lee Memorial Library's book group welcomes anyone who would like to join in our lively discussions.



March 23rd Meeting: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women - here between Lily and Snow Flower - that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well. From Publishers Weekly


Recommended Websites........


Reviews of the Book
The Author's Website
Reading Group Guide for the Book


Previous Selections -- Last Twelve Months........

March	The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper
April	The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
May	The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
June	Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky
July	Crippen by John Boyne
August	City of Thieves by David Benioff
September	The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
October	People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
November	Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones
December	The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
January	The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
February	The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

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