THE BINDING CHAIR.

THE BINDING CHAIR {Also published as The Binding Chair: A Visit From The Foot Emancipation Society} by KATHRYN HARRISON.

SOURCE: A re-read off our shelves.

BACK COVER BLURB: The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai.
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FIRST SENTENCE {Apprenticeship}: The gatepost, stuccoed pink to match the villa, bore a glazed tile painted with a blue number, the same as that in the advertisement.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 41}: She'd learn never to move her skirt while sitting, never to move her legs while lying down, and never to wash her feet in the same basin as her face - otherwise she would be reborn as a pig.

MY THOUGHTS: Last read a number of years ago I decided to re-read this in order to decide whether or not I wanted to keep it/ pass it on/donate it to a charity shop.

Sadly not a novel I enjoyed second time around. I don't know whether my tastes have changed since I last read it or that at the time we had plenty of shelf space and I wasn't so strict with myself as to only keep books I knew I'd re-read at some point in time.

Whilst at heart a story of China The Binding Chair isn't written by a Chinese author. Not that this usually matters, after all how many paranormal novels are written by vampires, werewolves or the like? Its just that I felt the author did not write with authority or for that matter much conviction.

Not so much a confusing read as what I'd describe as a fragmented one. I'm afraid the to-ing and fro-ing between decades and cities not to mention main characters, May, and her niece/surrogate child, Alice, made for a disjointed story. 

A story of obsessions, of what it is to be beautiful, of the sometimes perverse nature of man's desire - the author makes a great (and very graphic) deal of how erotically enticing May's English husband (and her Chinese father before him) found her (and her mother's) bound feet - whilst the book does go some way in exploring the cost to women I'm afraid for me much was eclipsed by the fact that at times it felt as if the author relied too heavily on shock tactics where none were needed.