Rate this book

Butterfly's Shadow (2010)

by Lee Langley(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0701184671 (ISBN13: 9780701184674)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Chatto & Windus

review 1: 3-1/2 stars...I kept wavering back and forth...I love the opera, MADAMA BUTTERFLY, and have seen it. I can remember being so shocked by the setting of 'One Fine Day' as I watched and listened. Langley takes this story, fleshes it out from both points of view...both young people completely unaware of the mess they've gotten themselves into. I've never liked Pinkerton, and for most of the book, I still didn't.BUT...Langley changes the pivotal scene in the opera and then follows her characters, both in Japan (Nagasaki) and Seattle. Thru the Depression, through the veterans' march on DC. Through Roosevelt's election, through the loosening of traditions in Japan, through Pearl Harbor, the internment camps, war in Europe, war in Japan...and the second atomic bomb.In some ways I ... morewas ticking off the historical events on a checklist...Langley does her homework and has added to my understanding of this world..but at what cost?To me, the cost was the characters. I liked them, I watched them grow and change. But the changes seemed, forced, somehow. They seemed to be cutouts to be moved around in this huge global saga.At heart BUTTERFLY is about intimate events, about small families, big decisions, certainly, but personal. Sometimes I felt like this book, with its richly layered title, was a newsreel of the early 20th century.Great last line, but not much closure.
review 2: Narrated by Laurel Lefkow10 hrs and 54 minsPublisher's SummaryIn a Japan still rigid with tradition, an apprehensive 15-year-old tea-house girl prepares to welcome her first client. In his gleaming white uniform, Lieutenant Pinkerton walks up the hill to a house in Nagasaki to find the female he has purchased for a few weeks. When he sails away, she waits, aching for his return. It is one of the world’s great love stories. And, as the curtain falls on Madame Butterfly, Cho-Cho hands over her son to his American father, before killing herself... In a daring imaginative leap, Lee Langley takes this searing moment as a springboard, sending Puccini’s characters spinning into a future undreamed of in the original. less

Download links for: Butterfly's Shadow

Advertising