Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Reviewed by: Susie Rivera, Reference Specialist
Genre: Historical Fiction
Suggested Age: Adult
What is this book about? This novel is the sequel to Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls, however, I believe there is enough background information given to read it on its own. Joy is nineteen years old and has just found out a big family secret. This takes her on a journey from her home in California to Shanghai to find her birth father. China in 1957 was in the midst of the beginning of Communism. Joy gets caught up in the Communist vision, falls in love and quickly marries a Chinese man when she visits a village collective. She soon finds that life in the collective is not the ideal that it is promised to be. When Pearl finds out what happened to her daughter, she is horrified and follows her to China to try to save her.
My Review: I have enjoyed several of Lisa See’s novels and this one is good as well. See always does her research and it really shows here. Communist China comes to life through the eyes of Joy. The hardships she faces while living in the collective were sometimes difficult to read. The tragedy surrounding this period was that Mao’s Great Leap Forward ended up being a man made famine. We see the horrors of that famine and what desperate people will do out of extreme hunger. In the beginning, Joy is a bit foolish as a character, but you must remember that she is just a teenager and still naïve. She definitely learns some very hard lessons by the end of the whole ordeal.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Insightful, Tragic, Eye-Opening
Give This a Try if You Like…Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Memoirs of the Geisha, The Killing Fields
Rating: 5/5
About FDL Reads
FDL Reads is a series of weekly book reviews from Fondulac District Library.
