Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

The key is to accept that it is not Europe and not try to convert the tradition to European understanding. Instead accepting it as something that is not your own. The rich description comes to an aid with that as it completes the picture entirely, providing all the help you need along the way of understanding the Forbidden City and all that once lay within. Of course, the most important part is, it may be historical but it is fiction and it is the hardest part, as once one starts reading it, it swallows and consumes the reader so much it is as difficult to get out of as a spider's web for a fly.

"My world has been an exasperating place of ritual where the only privacy has been inside my head. Not a day has gone by when I haven't felt like a mouse escaping one more trap. For half a century, I participated in the elaborate etiquette of the court in all its meticulous detail."

I think the quote above defines the novel in itself even though it is from the very first pargraph of the book. However it may be so because the feel of the book is that the story is drawn before it will be told and the clear and crisp explanation at the beginning helps to maintain that.

My favourite is the map of the Forbidden City at the beginning of the book. I have always been fascinated by it and I remember when I first encountered google earth it was the first place I virtually visited.



Of course, the map has an important function in this book, the description of the Forbidden City life is so elaborate that clearly the reader would be lost and clueless without it. It is like the visual map to the words and meanings of the words in the story. (Particularly symbolic is the heroine's palace amongst other things)

What I love most is the eternal state of denial. That just kept me going until the end.

It is certainly a book to be kept on the bookshelf for a refreshed read in years to come, no matter what the critics say. Funnily since reading this book I seem to have misplaced it and therefore could not use any more quotes for this review. I find it funny because I had all the good intention of keeping this book for a re-read in the future. I suppose I will have to scan all the charity shops for it again.