They call the Korean War America's "Forgotten War" but for the men and women who fought, bled and died in that war it is still real six decades later.
Catherine Aerie's "The Dance of the Spirits" is a well-written page-turner that I couldn't put down until I finished the last line at almost 2 in the morning. Aerie's writing is superb; her characters live and breath and her commentary on the society of the end of the Old China and the birth of the New China are so well intertwined with the story that it looks as if the story was somehow grown from seed to its final form.
Aerie explores the family structure of the fin-du-Nationalist China and the hypocrisy that allowed men to take and use women as they pleased while women were shamed and of no use anymore if they acted as men did.
The protagonists and real antagonists in this novel will surprise you as you learn who they really are. Aerie does a masterful job of hiding them in plain sight.
Aerie has you looking one way as she lays the real protagonist/antagonist structure in another -- an excellent stylistic move -- so that things that seemed so clear on one page are upended by the end of the chapter. I'll let you figure out who is whom -- father, his concubines (one of whom does give him a son); the Red Army; the North Koreans and a long list of others.
Meantime, Jasmine, or "eldest daughter" goes off for an education in medicine, something a refined woman of this era just didn't do; it would have been unseemly and might "ruin" her for marriage. Her education is the result of the hurt and shame her mother suffered when she was ushered out of her own home, only to be replaced by "mother four" (the concubine who gave Jasmine's father the son he so desperately wanted). Jasmine's mother's beliefs changed when she was replaced by "mother four." Jasmine's real mother wanted Jasmine to be sure she knew how to fend for herself and not have to depend on the largesse of a capricious male and medicine was the ticket.
After all of this, Jasmine's real mother could take the shame no longer and took the only way out she could think of (pills, one supposes). Then "mother four" quickly moves in and tries to engineer a marriage between "eldest daughter (Jasmine)" and one of the area's leading families that would set up their family's status and future for life. The only problem was the Jasmine had her own mind and demolished those plans with some fancy piano work.
Now "ruined," Jasmine enters medical school and studies surgery, something no woman of that era and place would have even had on her radar, thus putting the lid on the marriage plan.
Timed to coincide with the Korean war, we follow Jasmine through her many adventures and misadventures until she finds the love of her life, an American soldier.
Aerie then complicates matters by having the servant boy/brother - he had been brought in Jasmine's household and took their name. He is called into the great wartime adventure, only to be wounded and cared for by Jasmine whom he had not only decided earlier would be his, but his care reaffirmed it his plans.
Aerie then interplays the war; life in the Red Army; life in Korea and the Army into a work that has you wondering who would be on first and who would be on second (to use a baseball simile). It is handled so astutely you never see how the author plays with you. It is as if she is a cat playing with a toy mouse, only you, the reader, are the mouse. It is quite an enjoyable game.
Oh, and in one last plot move, Jasmine and the US GI have a child together, which complicates matters even more, but you'll have to find out how yourself.
Aerie's characterization of the relationships between Jasmine and Tin-Bo, the servant boy, and her American lover are poignant but not maudlin, which they could easily have become. She created a strong woman leading character and everything revolves around her. And the way it all ends up will surprise any reader.
If you get the chance read this book, you won't be able to put it down, I couldn't and you won't be able to, either.
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
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Top reviews from other countries
beckvalleybooks
a very emotive book which will touch every single feeling you can have
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2014