Word: bondmaid
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...certain degree, this is the problem which confronts the Westernized, tabloid-hardened reader of Catherine Lim's The Bondmaid, a novel which hits American bookstores this month. Lim, a best-selling author in Singapore for years, saw her latest manuscript rejected by every major publishing house at home before publishing it herself. Deemed objectionable and too "adult" by mainstream literary houses, the book promptly hit the top of Singapore's bestseller lists, leading to publication and distribution rights abroad...
...Bondmaid's strengths lies in its exploration of the relationships between the servants. As Han realizes more and more the complexities of the life of a bondmaid (a kind of slave), so too does the reader: as Han makes friends and enemies among her fellow servants, so too are the portraits of these characters increasingly more intimate with the succession of the chapters...
...particularly illuminating scene, the bondmaid Chu, who has been charged since youth with the care of "The Old One," --an ancient and literally undying presence in the house of Wu--must come to terms with his demise. Although she suffered his abuse for years and has developed a keen resentment for the old man as a result, Chu finds herself, in his absence, wandering aimlessly around the palace is the days before her eventual suicide. Lim's portrait of this depressing symbiosis is but one way in which the dichotomy between slave and slave owner is blurred, and often, transcended...
...Bondmaid is most certainly not light reading, with its thought-provoking discussion of immortality and its depiction of the extremes to which the poorest of the poor will venture in order to escape their misery. It is difficult to determine, however, whether the book remains in America as disturbing or as graphic as the publishers in Singapore predicted. This is partly because the marketing here has involved a removal from the original cultural context, without which the story is significantly less earth-shattering...
Miss Buck relies for throb-appeal on a blend of the Abie's Irish Rose and Cinderella themes. Peony is written in a soggy prose and stilted pidgin that suggest a kind of mimicry of Miss Buck's previous work. Her heroine, pretty Chinese bondmaid Peony, is in the service of a wealthy Jewish family, the Ezras. As such she tends flowers, serves tea, and prepares the bed of her "young master," David Ezra. It will surprise no reader to learn that behind Peony's ornamental exterior beats the passionate heart of a woman wildly in love...
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