The Binding Chair (Paperback, New Ed)

This is the story of a close-knit English family living in China in the early 20th century, whose lives are changed when uncle Arthur, member of the Foot Emancipation Society, marries May, a Chinese prostitute with bound feet. May is wilful, determined and deadly, and when she teaches her 12-year-old niece Alice to roll opium balls the size of marbles, Alice's mother spirits the child away to an English boarding school. However, when Alice is reunited with May the relationship between them becomes even more dangerous. This is Harrison's fourth novel and it displays acute, dynamic characterization. Excellently researched, with colloquial tales woven into excerpts from Chinese legend, there are moments when it seems the story has been lifted straight from the annals of a perceptive historian. (Kirkus UK)

'This is a tale as absorbing and exciting as Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.' Sunday Express The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai. From Kathryn Harrison, author of the bestselling memoir THE KISS. Beautiful, charismatic and destructive, May escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where, in 1899, she meets Arthur, an Australian. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet. Reforming May is out of the question, so Arthur marries her instead, and brings her home to live with his sister Dolly, her husband Dick, and their two girls Alice and Cecily. In Alice May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for the child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother withholds. But when the twelve year old is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, Alice is enrolled in a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her, and to control the whole family.

General

Imprint:	Fourth Estate
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	June 2001
Authors:	Kathryn Harrison
Dimensions:	197 x 130 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	312
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-1-84115-269-1
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	1-84115-269-2
Barcode:	9781841152691

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