For three love sick maidens, their love of the opera leads to a lifelong obsession, even in death.

“Peony in Love” is a novel by Lisa See and is based on a true story about three Chinese women who defied their society’s conventions, and wrote and published a book.

Foot bound and literate, their love for the opera moved them to write commentary and publish it.

The main character of the novel is Peony, a young Chinese aristocrat with bound feet, in an arranged marriage, and trapped in the Chen Family Villa.

She was obsessed with “The Peony Pavilion” ever since she was little, and her father fed this obsession by getting her every edition of the opera printed, against her mother’s wishes.

Her mother is afraid that Peony will go down the same road as so many other maidens have before, obsession with the opera that will lead to death.

Peony’s father ignores his wife and decides to stage a showing of the opera at their villa.

Behind their screens, the women view the opera, and Peony sees a young man in the crowd.

It is love at first sight and against all her family rules, meets this young poet, Ren, on the Moon Viewing Pavilion.

She is enamored with him, and laments the fact that they are both already arranged to be married to other people.

This triggers an unstoppable love sickness, where Peony spends all her time writing commentary on the opera in her newest edition, before she is married away into a loveless marriage.

Refusing to eat, she slowly dwindles away until she finally dies.

However, among the funeral preparations and grief felt by all at her passing before she was married, her ancestor’s tablet is left undotted. Her soul rips in three parts and keeps her from moving on.

She becomes a hungry ghost, one of the most feared and revolting creatures in all of Chinese lore.

As her soul roams the earth, she goes to the house the young man showed her on the Moon Viewing Pavilion, and realized that she was meant to marry him all along.

Mourning her loss of life and a chance at true love, she helps his future wife, Tan Ze, become the perfect wife that he deserves, and that she can never be.

She possesses his new wife’s body and coaxes her to be the perfect wife: silent, pretty, gentle, and determined to make her husband’s life as pleasant as possible.

As Peony gains control over her body and willpower, she makes Tan Ze continue Peony’s commentary project.

Soon, Peony regains her obsession, and slowly Tan Ze stops eating as the only way to gain control over her body against Peony’s invasion. Tan Ze is diagnosed with love sickness, and dies shortly after.

A third love, Yi, marries Ren, and this time Peony is more careful. She helps Yi get pregnant with a boy, have a successful birth of the boy, and barely influences Yi to write commentary on “The Peony Pavilion.”

Yi finishes the project the three women started, and decides to publish the great influential work, that seems to move many to emotion.

“Peony in Love” is a beautifully written with interesting accounts of Chinese culture. The novel is full of mystery and agony, as Peony’s tragic story only begins at death.

“Peony in Love” was a New York Times best seller in 2007.

Lisa See has written another great novel and continues to bring to life the rare stories of women in feudal China.

She is also the author of “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” which was an international bestseller in 2005.

Her newest novel “Shanghai Girls,” about two sisters who leave Shanghai in 1937 to enter into arranged marriages in the United States. Their story takes place in Los Angeles.

See likes to write about womens stories that have been lost to history or been kept a secret to uphold the cultural norms of a society.

Her focus is on Chinese culture and the lives of Chinese-Americans.

She was born in Paris but grew up in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time with her father’s family in Chinatown.

Other novels by See include “On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family,” which was published in 1995 and became a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book.

See also wrote “Flower Net” in 1997, “The Interior” in 2000, and “Dragon Bones” in 2003.

For more information about See’s novels, go to www.lisasee.com

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