Review: Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

Random House

May 2011

Format: Hardcover, 354 pages

First line: The wail of a police siren in the distance tears through my body.

From the inside cover: In her beloved New York Times bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, and, most recently, Shanghai Girls,
Lisa See has brilliantly illuminated the potent bonds of mother love,
romantic love, and love of country. Now, in her most powerful novel yet,
she returns to these timeless themes, continuing the story of sisters
Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy.

Reeling
from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt
for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to
find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl
were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance,
Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the
dangers in the communist regime.

Devastated by Joy’s flight and
terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no
matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages,
Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she
follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s
separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s
history threatens their very lives.

Acclaimed for her richly
drawn characters and vivid storytelling, Lisa See once again renders a
family challenged by tragedy and time, yet ultimately united by the
resilience of love.

My thoughts: I had the privilege of meeting Lisa See when she was touring after the release of this book. At the time I had only read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which I loved. I had a few of her other books, but just hadn’t had the time to read them. Since then, I have read Peony in Love and Shanghai Girls – both of which I really enjoyed.

Dreams of Joy is actually a continuation of the story told in Shanghai Girls. Joy, Pearl’s daughter, has found out some family secrets that has her fleeing to China to find her biological father and become part of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Being young and idealistic, she believes that everything is good in China, that everyone is helping to build a country the Chinese can be proud of. Once there, she soon becomes disillusioned, coming face to face with the harsh realities of life for the peasants. Pearl, once vowing never to return to China, flees there in search of Joy. Arriving in Shanghai, she quickly realizes it is not the Shanghai it was when she and May lived there so many years ago. Both
women get caught up in the changes in China and it takes three years
before Pearl is able to rescue her daughter from the commune. Their
harrowing journey out of China was quite intense and I had a hard time putting the book down.

Told from both Joy and Pearl’s point of view, the reader really gets a feel for how life was during Mao’s reign. At the heart of the story, this is really a book about relationships within a family, and life in communist China during the “Great Leap Forward.” The
horrors that occurred in China during this time are quite unsettling – the starvation, programs like ‘Swap Child, Make Food’, and control through
fear – they unfortunately are a memorable, yet haunting element throughout this book.

I always feel that I learn a lot about the Chinese culture when reading Lisa See’s works – especially since this is an area I do not know much about. Her writing is so descriptive that you feel as if you are there with the character, that you are going through what they are going through.

Do you have an author that you go-to when you want to learn about a particular culture? Have you read any other authors that write about the Chinese culture? I’m always looking for recommendations!

(I purchased this book.)