Review: Bound

My last two reviews have mentioned one of my favorite childhood authors, Donna Jo Napoli. So on my latest library trip, I decided to pick up one of her books I haven't read, just for old time's sake. To my delight, it not only brought back all the good memories I associate with her wonderful work, but was a great story in its own right.

Genre: young adult fiction

Plot: Xing Xing lives as a second-daughter slave girl in Ming Dynasty (1368) China. Her young life has already been marked by the passing of both her beloved parents, and now she lives as a slave for her vicious stepmother and dim-witted half-sister. But Xing Xing is a clever girl, whose determination, virtue, and just a touch of magic, eventually enable her to escape her misfortunes.

Structure: The chapters were straightforward and quick-paced, allowing me to breeze through the 25 chapter within a day. Vivid and compelling, Napoli's greatest strength is her charm as a storyteller. She knows exactly how much detail to leave in, how much to leave out, and how to keep the pages turning. Although she used next to no reference to the Chinese language, the culture still shone through, striking the perfect balance between setting and story.

Execution: Napoli's prose is measured, but not lyrical. She writes with clarity and not much ornamentation, yet strangely this doesn't bother me the way simple prose usually does. I think her plot makes up for this by far, sweeping the reader off their feet too fast to realize the sentences are, for the most part, plain.

Napoli typically writes (or should I say, reimagines) fairy tales in modern ways, but I was so taken with this one that I didn't even figure out what she was basing it on until the very end (don't read the Theme section if you want to be surprised by it, too). And even then, I was still pretty surprised by the twists! Perhaps I'm just too smitten with an old favorite author, but I thought it was a marvelously executed attempt with spirit, zeal, and art.

Theme: Ming China, foot binding, Confucianism, and Cinderella

Read this if it's been too long since you've heard a good fairy tale

4 out of 5 stars

Other works:
For fun, I will provide an (*) around the books of hers that I've also read:
Alligator Bayou
* Beast
Breath
Crazy Jack
* Daughter of Venice
Fire in the Hills
For the Love of Venice
The Great God Pan
Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale
The King of Mulberry Street
* The Magic Circle
North
* Sirena
The Smile
* Song of the Magdalene
* Spinners
Stones in Water
* Zel

If you liked this, you might also like:
Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love
Kara Dalkey's Little Sister, The Heavenward Path, and The Nightengale

Ironically, I will NOT recommend Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club because I hated that crap.