The Reviews are Coming In

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan opens tomorrow and the reviews are already coming in. The first one I read wasn't exactly complimentary! Read it and decide for yourself! Here's a small sampling:

The film version isn’t content to leave well enough alone. It gives us Lily and Snow Flower, but it also grafts on--apparently for viewers too antsy to sit through a period piece--a parallel, contemporary story.

Say what? I'm so tired of the parallel story device and I'm sorry to hear that it's been tacked onto Snow Flower and the Secret Fan! I thought it diminished the power of Water from Elephants, which would have worked quite well without the old-guy-in-a-nursing-home-remembering-when storyline. Wasn't the traveling circus story of love, violence, betrayal enough? Sure it was! [Another novel with an unnecessary parallel story was The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean. Have you read that one? What did you think?]

--Diane