Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Dec 2011
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A sweeping debut novel set in 1930s Shanghai for fans of Lisa See, Empress, and Memoirs of a Geisha.
In 1930s Shanghai, following the path of duty takes precedence over personal desires for every young Chinese woman. For Feng, that means becoming the bride of a wealthy businessman in a marriage arranged by her parents. In the enclosed world of the Sang household - a place of public ceremony and private cruelty - she learns that fulfilling her duty means bearing a male heir.
Ruthless and embittered by a life that has been forced on her, Feng plots a terrible revenge. But as the years pass, she must come to a reckoning with the sacrifices and the terrible choices she has made to assure her place in family and society, before the entire country is engulfed in the fast-flowing tide of revolution.
Paperback original
"[Jepson] does a solid job of voicing a female character." - Library Journal
"Despite the riveting story line, the novel suffers from awkward syntax, and its treatment of time (decades and wars are dismissed in single pages) hints at more familiarity with quickly moving screenplays than full-length fiction." - Publishers Weekly
"Simple but strong on detail and emotional intensity... An unremittingly bleak story, delivered with some passion." - Kirkus Reviews
"Jepson... evokes time and place well as he describes the life of privilege that Feng comes to take for granted only to have her life veer dramatically and be overtaken by the Great Leap Forward." - Booklist
"Poignant and elegantly written." - Romantic Times
"A beautifully poetic story. Duncan Jepson creates a poignant set of characters and follows the journey of one woman who attempts to stop the cycle of history in the only way she knows how, but with dire consequences." - Geling Yan, author of The Banquet Bug
"This story is breathtaking. Like a poem or a painting, it reveals the old Shanghai. It's a great work that will move its readers." - Hong Ying, international bestselling author of Daughter of the River
"The life of this novel's main character is splintered into thousands of pieces, each of them reflecting the changes of Chinese history, yet all of them coming out in Duncan Jepson's poetic, passionate writing." - Qiu Xiaolong, author of the Inspector Chen mysteries
"An accomplished first novel. Duncan Jepson magically inhabits the life of a young Chinese woman in 1930s Shanghai, following Feng's unlikely evolution from neglected second daughter to first wife of the rich and powerful Sang family and her unexpected epilogue. I thoroughly enjoyed this book." - Janice Y. K. Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Piano Teacher
This information about All the Flowers in Shanghai was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Duncan Jepson is the award-winning director and producer of five feature films and documentaries that have been shown on the Discovery Channel Asia and National Geographic Channel. He has also edited two Asia-based magazines, the acclaimed West East Magazine and the Asia Literary Review. In 2005, Duncan established a charity, the Society for Children's Education in Asia, to support the Aschiana Accelerated Girls Learning Centre. He was a director of the Child Welfare Scheme, a charity supporting street kids and young mothers in Nepal. Most recently he established Share, a charity focused on providing opportunities to reduce social inequality among Hong Kong youth. Also a corporate lawyer, he lives in Hong Kong. To learn more about All the Flowers in Shanghai, visit www.alltheflowersinshanghai.com.
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