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Šapat Orijenta (2011)

by Sara Sheridan(Favorite Author)

3.36 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Znanje, Zagreb

review 1: The cover should have make me suspicious in the first place. But well, I knew the story of Robert Fortune and I was eager to read more about it. What a delusion! Fortunes' character, the true protagonist of a real story is secondary and his arch uninteresting: it's easy to fall in love when you're alone - alone - with just another human being for years. It's not even love. It's just need for sex. Mary, his sister in law is pretty much absurd: she learn Chinese just by listening to other Chinese around her; she cuts a hole in the ice with a knife as if she was cutting butter, she judges the homicide Robert had to commit as one of the duties sometimes people must do. Robert and Mary talk amazingly about their intimacies in front of Robert's wife (Mary's sister) and this latt... moreer retort she'll consider divorce. These XX century attitudes and thoughts are badly placed in a novel that should depict the Victorian British Society and go together with the portrait of a Chinese inland that looks like Wales. A cheap, shallow, inaccurate book.
review 2: This is a tale of a disgraced woman, a secret mission and the quest to find tea in C19th China. As I have a fascination about anything to do with China I did think this book would appeal to me and it did up to a point.We follow our two lead characters Robert Fortune and Mary across the seas to another land and new adventures. Mary has been disgraced in London as she has had a child out of wedlock and Robert, her brother in law, seeks to get rid of her to a faraway place.Robert is off to China in search of tea plants and others he can sell back in London and he takes Mary with him albeit under duress as Mary cannot stand him.Once we reach China the author completely captures the sounds, sights and smells for the reader and it does feel at times that her descriptive narrative can overtake the story and we sometimes loose the characters. This is a real shame as we do not get to know the backgrounds of both Robert and Mary fully and so cannot grow to love them as people.Please don't get me wrong though as this is a good read and I did enjoy the most of it as it turns out to be a love story at the very heart of it all. Following the two of them into the very heart of China at this dangerous time and seeing it all through the eyes of Mary and learning how she copes so far from home is a delight. She seems to be able to take most things in her stride even fighting pirates!Would I recommend this book? Yes I would as the way the author invokes the feel of China at this time is a real delight. less

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