The Red Chamber

by Pauline A. Chen

In eighteenth-century China, the beautiful orphan Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to seek shelter with her mother's family in Beijing. At Rongguo Mansion, she is drawn into a world of sumptuous feasts, silken robes, and sparkling jewels—as well as a complex web of secret rivalries and intrigues that threatens to trap her at every turn. When she falls in love with Baoyu, the family's brilliant, unpredictable heir, she finds the forces of the family and convention arrayed against her, and must risk everything to follow her heart.

Based on the epic Dream of the Red Chamber—one of the most famous love stories in Chinese literature—this novel recasts a timeless tale for Western audiences to discover.

• ISBN10: 0307701573
• ISBN13: 9780307701572
• Publish Date: 10 July 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 5 February 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Knopf Publishing Group
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 381
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

Wow. This is ... one heck of a story filled in 381 pages. It's the kind of drama and twist-filled story I could maybe compare to a long Netflix or AMC series, only with less violence and misogyny on behalf of the writers.

Book content warnings:
- incest (cousins ~ time period-specific)

In the author's note, Pauline Chen says The Red Chamber is inspired by an 18th Century book that's widely thought to be the most important book in Chinese literature: Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xuequin.

In Pauline Chen's version, she focuses on the three main female characters and their lives in 18th Century Beijing, where "women lacked power and were pitted against one another by the system of concubinage".

1. Lin Daiyu lives in the South after her mother "left the family" to marry for love. After her mother dies, Daiyu is sent to live with her cousins in Rongguo. There, she becomes involved with the large Jia family (and let's be honest, all its drama).

2. Wang Xifeng (wife of the cousin of the heir of the Jia family, whew) basically runs the Jia household. She makes sure everyone has their tea, runs the finances, is in charge of all the servants, etc. A strong and complicated woman, educated and intelligent, but unfortunately, can't give her husband an heir. And in that time period ... that doesn't bode well for her as a wife and first daughter-in-law.

3. Lastly, Xue Baochai, another cousin of the Jia heir, who lives with the Jias. She often hides her emotions behind what Xhifeng calls a "porcelain mask".

I'm not even sure what to say about this book. It's written in such a beautiful, wonderfully-crafted style, and Pauline Chen's storytelling kept me up till 3:00am. Character development was so masterfully done, too. It's just such a huge piece of work, I still can't believe it was all done within such a small amount of pages.

Anyway, this story is so full of betrayals, love stories, twists, and surprises. If you want something thick you can really sink your teeth into, this would be a good thing to read. It probably won't be something I'll really remember 10 years from now, but It's still really, really good.