Why a Booktrail?
1930s,1950s -1962: A story about relationships within a family, and life in communist China during the ‘Great Leap Forward’. Only an experience that can be relived via the pages of a book.
Dreams of Joy
What you need to know before your trail
Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy.
Joy has discovered some family secrets so has ran away to Shanghai to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love.
Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, but the Communist regime holds dangers she cannot foresee. Pearl is concerned for Joy’s safety and so is determined to save her, no matter what the personal cost may be.
When Joy and Pearl’s separate journeys begin to converge, it is also the moment when one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history occurs and has personal repercussions for them both.
Travel Guide
This is one epic journey – set in and around the time of the Great Leap forward but in such an interesting way that this heavy subject matter is anything but. The reader is placed right there beside the characters feeling every emotion as they did and learning about the differences between the generations in the way Pearl and Joy both view the country’s situation at that time – understanding them if not always agreeing with them. Using their own voices to narrate the story gives the novel a feeling of intimacy and being able to literally sit beside them as they talk.
As a booktrail bonus, the settings described in this book are a very strong point of what makes the story so powerful and evocative. The landscapes – both political and cultural as well as geographical are beautifully evoked via descriptions but also via the characters reactions and their way of talking. This is one novel which made us read more of the time period in the novel and articles about people who lived through it. Could be used as a history lesson in itself but one of the most interesting and captivating you will ever have.
Booktrailer Review
This book is quite the work of art! A lovely sequel to the Shanghai girls where you find out what happened next – and where you discover the truth that lies within human behaviour and the culture of the time, in the most trying of circumstances. The cover is also beautifully evocative of the culture and story inside.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Twitter:@Lisa_See
Facebook: /lisaseebooks
Web: lisasee.com
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