DONNA JO NAPOLI uses her experience of China and Chinese folklore to craft an engaging version of the traditional Cinderella story. She has changed the setting and timing of the Chinese version but has added a powerful mixture of narrative and characterisation to produce a moving, poignant story.

Xing Xing is bound by her family duty to care for her step sister, the favoured sister of her stepmother. Stepmother may not be entirely wicked, but she is selfish and self-centered and sees Xing Xing merely as a tool for her own and her daughter Wei Ping's advancement. Wei Ping is bound in her own way: her feet have been restricted in the traditional manner to attract a suitable mate.

Though Xing Xing is marginalised and downtrodden she manages to maintain her moral and psychological balance by constant reference to the values of her dead parents. Her mother proves to be her salvation from beyond the grave in a surprising but entirely believable fashion.

By embarking on a journey from her home in a cave to find a herbalist capable of helping her sister find relief from her pain, Xing Xing (though a fatalist at heart) sees how she can control her own destiny and eventually finds the happiness she deserves. Of course there is a prince and a pair of golden slippers but the imagery somehow carries more verisimilitude in this context.

Napoli uses lyrical cadences and an economic prose style. But while she reveals the poetry and beauty in rural China she does not shy away from the harshness and even cruelty lying barely below the surface. Some of the scenes in the book are genuinely harrowing.

This powerful book works on many levels and provides a perceptive insight into the realities of life without sensationalising them: an excellent and though-provoking read.

Paul McGuire
January 30, 2005

Paul McGuire is a freelance author, writer and reviewer. He is also Deputy Principal of Sha Tin Junior School.