Book Reviews

Review by Inkgirl

Bound, by Donna Jo Napoli?  Well, it is true to many of the singular characteristics of the Chinese story; that's not necessarily a good thing.
     The story of Cinderella, of which almost every culture has a version, probably originated in China.  The Chinese version has many of the characteristics of the Western version . . . before Disney got to it.  Things like Cinderella's mother somehow helping her even though she's dead.  Awkward to say the least.  Of course, most fairy tales, before Disney, were really wierd and not something you'd read to your kids.  Ever.  Disney sterilized fairy tales, made them more logical, and kind of gave them all a central theme.  Originally, Cinderella was weird, but this time it wasn't the Grimms' fault.
     I liked the idea behind Napoli's version: take the girl back to where she came from, China, in a historical setting and tell it without real magical embellishments.  So, in this story, Cinderella is named Xing Xing (pronounced Shing Shing, meaning "stars") and lives in a village "cave home" with her stepmother and stepsister.  In this story, her father, a scholar (why is a scholar in a cave?) has two wives, each with one daughter.  When Xing Xing's mother dies, she tells her daughter to constantly wait upon her father and to hear his death wish.  The other wife is jealous and, when her father falls of a cliff, makes Xing Xing do all the work. 
     Well, it sounds like a nice enough story.  The story of the good daughter being oppressed and eventually escaping usually works.  And it would have made it, in Donna here, had thought about it.
     There are many things in the story that don't make sense, period; and there are things that presumably could have made sense if explained--and they never were.
     For one thing, why does the scholar father live in a cave?  One would think, that being educated and all, he could afford a house.
     And why on earth did Xing Xing's mom leave her with this strange last request?  In this story, those are the duties of the wife.  Why would a mother ask her daughter to perform wifely duties?  And she must have known that it would make the other wife jeealous (which it does, thus causing the stepmother to hate her stepdaughter).
     Other things are overused and predictable.  For instance, of course the head of the house in ancient China is a nonconformist.  Of course he doesn't have his daughters feet bound; and of course he educates them.  Silly reader!  Don't you know that in every culture that women aren't educated in, our heroine will be different?  And how unexpected that an ancient Chinese heroine will not have her feet bound like everyone else?
     Also, some things that Napoli changed from the original story are that there is only one stepdaughter (probably easier to manage), the slipper isn't magical, and   . . . uh, wait.  What?  The prince isn't actually at the ball?  Yup.  Only it isn't a ball.  It's a village festival.  So, yeah, the shoe isn't magical; it's just from Xing Xing's mom (as are the clothes).  And people find it.    From this shoe spread rumors about the girl who wore it until she becomes beautiful beyond reason.  A stretch?  Well, yeah.  Want an even bigger stretch?  The shoe doesn't fit anyone else in the whole community?  In the Eastern tale, the shoe changes sizes so as to not fit anyone but the heroine.  And in the Western story, the shoe is magic as well.  In retellings, there really aught to be a reason (like Ella having "fairy feet" in Ella enchanted).  But this time there isn't.  It just happens to only fit Xing Xing (and it's not because her feet are big; they were her mother's shoes an
 d her feet were bound).
     And something else you might want to take note of:  The fish.  "Uh, what?" you ask. "I don't remember any fish."  Well, that's because you read read the European version.  In the original Chinese story, the heroine had a pet fish.  It was magical and the stepmother found out and ate it (but the girl finds the bones, which are magical).  Napoli left the fish in; but it went through some alterations.  For one thing, it's not a goldfish, it's a carp.  In Chinese mythology, a carp can become a dragon swimming up the falls, and is revered.  So, Xing Xing has a secret fish friend.  And here is where story overlaps with spirituality.  Bound repeatedly brings up subjects like Chinese "demons" ancestor "spirits" and reincarnation.  Here is another fuzzy issue, because Napoli never makes it clear whether, in this story, the ancestors do follow people around and there are reincarnated people everywhere, or whether the characters just think this.  You see, in this story, the fish is
 n't a pet, it's supposedly Xing Xing's reincarnated mother.  This makes it even stranger and definatly more disturbing that the stepmother kills and eats it.  Umm, gross.  Obviously the stepmother believes that the fish was Xing Xing's mom, as is made apparent when the girl confronts her.
     There isn't a lot of action and really the only other thing (aside from the fish and the party and a blind racoon,  presumed to be a "demon") is the escapade where Xing Xing travels and meets a doctor and spends several chapters there where ultimately, nothing happens.  This section appears to be filler for the still very-short book.
     And back to our prince.  He doesn't even make an appearance until like the last two pages.  Apparently he heard the stories about the girl who owned the shoe and wants to marry whomever it was.  Let me also take a moment to say that in these last few pages Xing Xing appears to change completely from one character to another.  She seems, for most of the book, to be little more than a child (I'd guess about fourteen years old).  She's also shy and demure and easily frightened for most of the book.  But in the last few pages, she turns into a more modern heroine.  Suddenly she's a beautiful witty young woman dressed in slaves clothes.  Thinking the prince is using the whole shoe deal to just pick whoever is the prettiest girl in the area (seeing as a shoe could fit any number of people) she is rather angry at the prince.  But when it's too small for her stepfamily (too small even though they have bound feet and she doesn't)  the prince lets everybody know how sad he was not
  to find the girl because they are the last ones.  Xing Xing all of a sudden decides to leave her family and producing the other shoe (and her party clothes) has a witty, forward back-and-forth with the prince (who appears to be in his thirties or something in contrast to the teenage Xing Xing) upon which he decides to marry a village cave-dweller that he met two minutes ago and Xing Xing leaves her nasty stepfamily as a totally different character.  The End.
     It's not an aweful book.  It's clean.  It's short.  It's an engaging read.  But it's illogical, religiously fuzzy, and occasionally just stupid.  Not an aweful book.  But not really worth the time to read.