SHANGHAI GIRLS (Lisa See) - February 2/14

The best comparison I can come up with for this book is if someone took a 90 minute movie and somehow stretched it out to 12 punishing hours. There's definitely some interesting stuff here and the characters are quite well defined, but the book just goes on and on to an extent that's ultimately somewhat interminable. It got to the point where it would take me a hell of a lot of motivation to read even 10 pages at a time. It probably doesn't help that the story is just unrelentingly grim; Pearl is gang-raped, her husband commits suicide, she and her sister are locked up for months on end, her daughter discovers that May is her real mother, etc, etc. It's a little comical just how badly things go for Pearl. Supposedly things improve in the sequel but it seems highly unlikely that I'll ever read it. ** out of ****