The Binding Chair

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In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, the narrative intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future. May, beautiful and charismatic, escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where she meets Arthur, an Australian involved with the Foot Emancipation Society. His mission to rehabilitate May quickly turns into an irresistible attraction to her bound feet. Unable to reform her, Arthur marries May and brings her home to live with his family, including his two daughters, Alice and Cecily. May sees in Alice the possibility of redemption, a surrogate for a lost child, while Alice seeks the love her own mother withholds. However, when Alice is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, she is sent to a London boarding school, far from May's influence. The story unfolds amid beauty and cruelty, in a lawless place where traditions clash, and tragedy looms over a world built on unsettled waters. By turns shocking, exquisite, and hilarious, this work is a spellbinding literary triumph.