Pre-Owned Peony : A Novel of China (Paperback) 9781559213387

from Meredy

Six-word review: Love and duty bind Chinese slave. Extended review: In a large city in mid-nineteenth-century China, a woman named Peony is bound in service to an old, established Jewish family. Her pivotal role in the life of the family bridges two ancient traditions, each with its observances a...

from vcg610

Peony, a classic choice of our book club, and the first Pearl S. Buck I've read...how have I waited this long?? She was a prolific author and also a very good one. A child of American missionaries to China, she was raised speaking Chinese and understood the culture as few Americans could. Peony w...

from krazy4katz

An insightful look at the tension between assimilation and maintaining one's heritage in a Jewish family that has lived for 4 generations in China. Ironically, told with compassion and understanding by the daughter of Christian missionaries. Pearl Buck tells this story through the eyes of Peony, ...

from MooqieLove

This was my first (and still only) Pearl S. Buck book and I cherish it. While the summery makes it sound like a romance it is more about the historical background of the Jews escaping to live in China and how the two clash culturally. Very interesting, though slow at first. Once I made it past th...

from ex_ottoyuhr

Pearl Buck at her sloppiest is still Pearl Buck (and this at least isn't _Mandala_). Anachronisms abound, some of them quite outrageous to someone who knows Chinese history (and not entirely surprising if you know Buck's distinctly populist ideas about the proper role and form of fiction), and se...