I can see why this book is on so many wish lists instead of being readily avaiable. I'm going to keep my copy for awhile and recommend it to my book club. Supurb writing and character development, a fascinating, intimate story of an intermarriage family in China in the early 20th century.

Kathryn Harrison has a gift for creating exceptionally beautiful prose. After reading her memoir, The Kiss, I was compelled to look in to her fiction, though I don't normally like works of fiction. This was a most bizarre book! I wanted to like it - I really did. But I am left feeling somewhat unsettled and a bit disappointed, despite the glorious writing.

The association and relationship between May and Alice is handled beautifully. I loved May as a character, but felt there were far too many periphery characters which really didn't add to the story (Eleanor, and Suzanne, for example). I would have like to have seen the lives of other Chinese nationals explored a bit more (Brother and the other Brother, and possibly May's Grandmother, for example.)

I despise gratuitous sex, and Alice's encounters were just that - gratuitous. The only sex scene that I felt was germane to the story was May's encounters with her first husband. The scene describing May and Suzanne and Suzanne's virginity was simply absurd. Why the author thought it added something to the story, I will never know.

I won't reveal the ending, but suffice it to say, it left me cold. What a cheap way to end what could have been a glorious book. :p

I will try another of her works, simply because I love the way she writes. However, I cannot recommend this book, as it is written. It held so much promise and simply fell flat.

Absolutely excellent book- first I've read by this author. Slow moving story draws you in and you don't realize how bizarre it is till you're already commited to the characters...

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Kathryn Harrison is a great writer, though this is a departure from her more contemporary stuff. This was very interesting.

Excellent book about with a wonderful cast of characters.

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves in The Binding Chair; or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future.

The Binding Chair unfolds among scenes of astonishing beauty and cruelty, in a lawless place where traditions and cultures clash, and where tragedy threatens a world built on the banks ofunsettled waters?from the bustling Whangpoo River to the lake of blood in the Chinese afterworld. By turns shocking, exquisite, and hilarious, The Binding Chair is another spellbinding literary triumph by the writer whose work Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times has called "powerful and hypnotic.

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future.

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