The contrast between Mah's calm narrative voice and the harshness of her story is both haunting and instructive. Mah's family history has been shaped by the convulsions that rocked twentieth-century China, but it is the presence of strong women that emerges as the driving force in her piercing memoir. Mah's mother died just after she was born, so her female role models were her rebellious grandaunt, who founded a bank run by and for women in an era during which Chinese women were still having their feet bound, and her father's sister, who tried desperately to shield Mah from Niang, her vicious stepmother. Niang also defied the Chinese preference for submissive women, but she used her powers to malignant effect, poisoning her stepchildren's relationships with each other and with their father. But Mah, too, has proven to be indomitable, surviving a childhood of extreme, even surreal lovelessness and abuse to become a woman of profound compassion, and her compelling story is a testament to the transcendence of moral fortitude and forgiveness. --Donna Seaman

Although the focus of this memoir is the author's struggle to be loved by a family that treated her cruelly, it is more notable for its portrait of the domestic affairs of an immensely wealthy, Westernized Chinese family in Shanghai as the city evolved under the harsh strictures of Mao and Deng. Yen Mah's father knew how to make money and survive, regardless of the regime in power. In addition to an assortment of profitable enterprises, he stashed away two tons of gold in a Swiss bank, and eventually the family fled to Hong Kong. But he was indifferent to his seven children and in the thrall of a second wife who makes Cinderella's stepmother seem angelic. His first wife, Yen Mah's mother, died at her birth, and the child, considered an ill omen, was treated with crushing severity. But she was encouraged by the love of an aunt and eventually made her way to the U.S., where she became a doctor, married happily and, ironically, was the one her father and stepmother turned to in their old age. In recounting this painful tale, Yen Mah's unadorned prose is powerful, her insights keen and her portrait of her family devastating. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This dramatic autobiography by a writer and doctor begins with the reading of a will that mystifies, then flashes back to recount events in a truly unpleasant family of seven brothers and sisters, a cruel French-Chinese stepmother, and a rich, uncaring father. In 1937, Adeline's mother died giving birth to her in Tienjin, marking her forever as bad luck. The family moved to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, with trips to Monte Carlo, London, and, finally, California for Adeline. In the meantime, with World War II, the Communist takeover in 1949, Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. Mostly, however, rivalries, jealousies, injustice, neglect, conniving, backbiting, and betrayal dominate this family. An intriguing tale, though it says less about China than about one particular Chinese family; for contemporary China collections.‘Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.