The book started off pretty well. The story of her grandmother with the bound feet, living as a concubine, trying to escape the culture, yet integrally woven into it; this was all very interesting. And the area when Mao took over with his foggy regime is enthralling. But then the book trails off and becomes frankly boring. Granted, she's had a more eventful life than I, but she sort of lost track of the focus about halfway through, as though she were excited about writing the book in the begining, but lost her concentration along the way and just sort of wrapped it up at the end. Overall, I would not recommend this book. 60 to 80 pages of interesting material, and lots of filler.