The kiss of death

I once threw Tony Parker’s Lighthouse across the fo’c’sle of a ship at sea when I read that his characters were composites. Oral history should be historical, or it goes into the ocean. So it is a shame that I sometimes question Xinran’s authenticity in this account of the loves and lives of four generations of Chinese women. I question conversations recalled verbatim when they clearly weren’t recorded; and perfectly rendered speech when only notes were taken.

Is this too severe? Then it is appropriate, because severity is something you must get used to, though this is a book about the Chinese concept of ‘talk love’, defined as ‘the process of cultivating love or interacting on the basis of love’, possibly leading to marriage. Xinran was fortunate to find a family of women whose stories so illuminate this subject.

First we meet Red, born in 1920 to parents whose marriage was arranged but whose father charmed his new bride — who had bound ‘three-inch lily feet’ — by hanging trees with ribbons covered with poetry.