Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145108 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Released on: 2009-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781596917033
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Based on the life of a Qing dynasty princess, this engrossing debut gives the rebellious Eastern Jewel a sensuous, unsentimental voice that draws admiration despite remorseless selfishness. In 1914 Manchuria, the curious, headstrong eight-year-old is sent to live with her father's blood brother Kawashima, who adopts her and renames her Yoshiko. She settles into her new life as a second-tier family member, at odds with the stepmother she secretly longs to please. Precocious, rebellious and beautiful, Yoshiko loses her virginity to her adopted grandfather at 15 and is seduced by her adopted father a year later; her further sexual adventures eventually leave her sterile. Inevitably, Kawashima marries her off, to a Mongolian prince. Unhappy in Mongolia, Yoshiko escapes to Tokyo, where she becomes a professional mistress, and then to Shanghai. As Japan and China tumble into war, one of Yoshiko's new lovers recruits her as a spy; American reporter Jack Stone soon arrives to further complicate matters of loyalty and righteousness. This lush, challenging portrait of a woman who dared to make her own choices—bad though they were—in terrible, oppressive times also makes a steamy historical beach read. (Sept.)
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Review
'Riveting - Maureen Lindley brings Eastern Jewel and her world vividly to life with a wealth of fascinating details in this captivating novel' Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans 'A breathtaking account of a ruthless and beautiful princess who betrayed her heritage to spy for the Japanese' Adeline Yen Mah, author of FALLING LEAVES

Review

Customer Reviews

Eastern Jewel's Private Papers should have stayed private.
In `The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel' Maureen Lindley has managed to take the life of a real Chinese-princess-turned-Japanese-spy and turned it into a tawdry jumble of sexual escapades and self-centered whining. To take a life as interesting as Eastern Jewel's and render it into little more than a celebration of Oriental exoticism is disappointing, to say the least.
The first major problem is Lindley's narrative doesn't quite ring with authenticity. Her descriptions of people and places have a strange detachment; objects and clothing might be detailed exquisitely but people and their personalities come across as flat and two-dimensional. I feel like there were very few attempts to understand the Chinese, Mongolian and Japanese cultures, and really bring them to life in the novel. Instead, Asia serves an exotic background that enables the author to unleash one sexual fantasy after another.
Eastern Jewel, later called Yoshiko in Japan, is too modern and too European in her ideas, so that one has to wonder how this personality would come about if she was raised first in a Chinese palace and later in a lax-but-still-thoroughly-Japanese household. She doesn't make sense in her settings and surroundings. She insists from the very first page that she is unique, an individual, an outsider, and different from other women. This book, supposedly a memoir she wrote while jailed for spying, has Eastern Jewel showing off her "worldliness" and sense of style, and it comes off as both arrogant and annoying. For example, as she speaks of servant:
"Every day I sent her to the market for fresh flowers, as I hated to see even the smallest sign of decay on the lilies and the sprays of orange blossom that I favoured. I cared nothing for the extravagance and in any case I think that Miura sold on the day-old flowers to the nearby hotel that rented its rooms by the hour. As far as I was concerned she was welcome to the few coins she made from the transactions. I have always thought it a good policy to be a generous mistress. Envy and deprivation are the enemies of loyalty, after all."
I don't know. To me she comes off as picky, spoiled, and utterly obnoxious to be around. It's really hard to get into a character who thinks she is so wonderful and wise, and also refuses to see any flaws in her approach to life. If I can't warm up to the character, and the plot has been shoved so far behind the main character's personality that it barely appears...well, I just can't enjoy the book.

Jewel turns out to be paste.
If this had been written as purely a novel in a pseudo-Oriental style, it would have been better - maybe. In writing it as "based on fact", though, the author produced a dud.

Not all historical figures have well documented lives. Any attempt to portray them must make some educated guesses to fill in the blanks. But, those guesses have to be the result of some pretty exhaustive research. There's no evidence that Lindley did her homework.

While the writing was technically good, the result was pretty blah. Parts that could have been realistically expanded weren't and parts that didn't add to the story were stretched way too far.

Though not the worst book I've read recently, it won't ever be pulled off the shelf to be read again. Give this one a pass.

A Mistake in Genre
I approached this novel as a fictionalized account of an Asian female spy in the first half of the twentieth century. Had I known it was erotica, my opinion would be quite different. From the first page, Eastern Jewel's preoccupation with sex is apparent. I have no issue with sex in fiction or erotica, but the manner in which this book is written is a turn-off. Not only is 90% of the book devoted to the sexual escapades of Eastern Jewel and the various people with which she comes into contact, but there is no real, concrete explanation for her character. Also, despite the Japanese and Chinese feel of the narrative, I was ultimately left unconvinced that the characters Lindley introduces into the book were ever real or if it truly represented the culture of these two countries. A brief look at the entry for Eastern Jewel in wikipedia shows that her life has long been obscured by legend and hype, even when she was alive, and I can't help but feel Lindley has only reconstructed the fiction of this woman's admittedly extraordinary life rather than utilizing this platform to delve deeper beyond the myth. What makes this book even more disappointing is that I found myself referring to non-fiction works devoted to this time period to understand what was happening in Eastern Jewel's life. One cannot deny the campy entertainment value of this book, but if you're looking for fictionalized biography, or even a work of erotic suspense in the vein of "Lust, Caution," The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel falls alarmingly short.