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Title: The Binding Chair: Or, a Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society by Kathryn Harrison ISBN: 0-06-093442-5 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (40 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Not as satisfying as it could have been
Comment: As a devout fan of Kathryn Harrison's writing, I was thrilled when I heard she had a new book coming out and fully expected it to be wonderful. Which it was, for the most part. The Binding Chair is beautiful and disturbing, full of details that startle the reader into an awareness of the characters and their location. I was especially entranced by Alice and her aggressive passivity.
Perhaps that was the reason I found the book vaguely dissatisfying - Alice's character doesn't seem to have resolution. If the story had been told exclusively from May's point of view, the ending (which I won't give away here) would have been inevitable, and made perfect sense - but we are left with Alice, at the window, a character who over the course of the book has become less herself rather than more herself. I closed the book wishing it had gone on for one more chapter.
As always, the writing was exquisite, the plot line shocking, the most painful events told with a detachment that is almost poetic.
I had the privelege of attending a book reading for 'The Binding Chair' last year - if you ever have the opportunity to hear Kathryn Harrison speak, do it. She's amazing.
Rating: 2
Summary: Shapeless and excessive
Comment: My first experience with Kathryn Harrison was the hypnotic Poison, a riveting, mysterious, tactile tale of the Inquisition. I have always enjoyed historical fiction; never had I encountered an author whose prose was so poetic--yet precise; we might not even know the names of the central characters, but we have, from the very beginning, an excrutiating, intimate knowledge of their circumstances and substance...and enjoy a narrative thread so taut it vibrates with each tortured, lyrical paragraph.
I have championed this author even when critics sprang up everywhere to defame her for her memoir of incest, The Kiss (which I actually found to be eloquent and restrained, especially as compared to others in the genre). I purchased The Binding Chair the moment it appeared in stores, and devoured the first several chapters enraptured. It was thus, with the greatest frustration and disappointment--indeed, embarrassment, as I had already recommended the book enthusiastically to several friends(including one declared Harrison foe)--that I watched the novel spiral into a deformed mess of sordid, irrelevant detail and vague side stories. I found most that most of the characters lacked both credibility and appeal, and their relationships were, for the most part, founded upon obtuse and inexplicable attachments. The narrative structure became less and less compelling, lurching back and forth in time and place as it labored toward a contrived and unoriginal ending...such a waste of what must have been a considerable research effort on Harrison's part...and truly disturbing to see this normally disciplined author wielding ill-defined excesses of anger and depravity in this fashion.
Rating: 4
Summary: Emanicpating Read
Comment: As usual, Kathryn Harrison proves her talent of controlling and weaving a story with seductive and alluring words to develop intuitive characters. The beauty and strength Harrison portrayed through May gives readers a novel describing the passions and struggles in relationships with the self, lover/family, and society. A Must Have for ANY Harrison fan.
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Title: The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison ISBN: 0380731479 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China by Ping Wang, Wang Ping ISBN: 0385721366 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Seal Wife: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison ISBN: 081296845X Publisher: Random House Trade Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Poison by Kathryn Harrison ISBN: 0380727412 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Three-Inch Golden Lotus (Fiction from Modern China) by Chi-Tsai Feng, David Wakefield, Howard Goldblatt ISBN: 0824816064 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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