Lady Tan's Circle of Women

I was way behind in my BOTM Club orders, and I ended up ordering five books right after Christmas. I researched what I wanted to order a bit, and this book was high on others' lists of favorites. I was prepared to be disappointed. But I was not.

Lady Tan's Circle of Women took me right into the life of a woman in fifteenth-century China. Tan Yunxian is our main character, and the story carries us through all the stages in a woman's life in that time—Milk Days, Hair-Pinning Days, Rice-and-Salt Days, and Sitting Quietly. Yunxian suffers all the agonies of girls and women despite being born into a family of high rank, and her story, along with the side stories of all the other women in her life, is deeply compelling.

A few quotes:

“Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together.”

“It takes a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour,” she recites. “Life without a friend is life without sun. Life without a friend is death.”

“I wish I were a giant gingko tree hundreds of years old, with the deep roots it takes to stand strong against mighty winds. Instead, I feel like a sapling in a typhoon, desperately trying to hang on.”

“After all, having a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in the same room is like tying a weasel and a rat together in a sock. The weasel and rat are enemies by nature. The weasel may be larger and have sharper teeth, but the rat is smarter and faster.”

“What surprising pleasure I get from imparting words alongside my mother-in-law. ‘Always respect your mother-in-law,' I say. ‘Always obey.' Lady Kuo hears this, folds her hands together, and adds in a sweet—mocking?—tone, ‘Listen to your mother-in-law, but follow your mother's example: Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.'“

“But happiness is transient. Yin and yang always struggle for balance, with the darkness of yin sometimes winning and the brightness of yang striving to bring things back into balance.”

“All the sorrows of the world arise from parting, whether in life or by death.”