The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel: A Novel by Maureen Lindley
Title: The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel: A Novel
Author/website(s): Maureen Lindley / Eastern Jewel (Wikipedia)
285 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: September ’09
Genre: Historical fiction
Review book or pleasure reading: Review book
New-to-me author: Yes
Would I recommend this book: Probably
Would I read more from this author: Yes
Journal notes: I enjoyed reading this fictionalized version of Eastern Jewel/Yoshiko Kawashima’s life. Her story definitely won’t be for everyone as she lived by her rules and often on the darker side but I found her a very interesting character.
Peking, 1914. Eight-year-old Eastern Jewel, daughter of Prince Su’s last concubine, peers from behind a carved screen as her father makes love to a bound-footed servant girl. Overhead the gathering clouds foreshadow the end of peace, and the start of Eastern Jewel’s own tumultuous story Eastern Jewel is an intoxicating heroine – a feisty, rebellious woman who refuses to accept mutely the docile, subservient role that early twentieth-century Chinese society prescribes for her. Her early sexual curiosity sees her banished as a young girl to live with distant relatives in Tokyo, then forced into a passionless marriage in bleak, freezing Mongolia. Increasingly isolated, at night she is plagued by disturbing fantasies and unsettling dreams.But she is a bold, rebellious woman who refuses to be pinned down by anyone – least of all a man – and in the dazzling city of Shanghai she puts her thrill-seeking nature to work spying for the Japanese, spurning her Chinese heritage and everything she once held dear Based on the real-life story of Yoshiko Kawashima, a fascinating but contradictory heroine who battled to juggle her extraordinary public life with her private paper demons, “The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel” is stormy, vivid and an utterly intoxicating tale of sexual manipulation and self-discovery that spans three countries and a world war.
(The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel was provided to me through a banner ad at Shelf Awareness. I was not paid and this book is being passed along to the another book blogger through Read It Forward 
)
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2 Responses to “The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel: A Novel by Maureen Lindley”
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She sounds fascinating to me!
I was not too fond of this one. I had to read it for Library Thing. I was annoyed with Eastern Jewel’s character. The story disappointed me, but the writing was fine.