The Binding Chair

'This is a tale as absorbing and exciting as Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.' Sunday Express The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai. From Kathryn Harrison, author of the bestselling memoir THE KISS. The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai. From the author of the bestselling memoir, The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison's unforgettable fourth novel takes us to Shanghai as the last century ends. Beautiful, charismatic and destructive May escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where, in 1899, she meets Arthur, an Australian whose philanthropic pursuits lead him into one scrape after another. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself immediately and helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet. Reforming May is out of the question, so Arthur marries her instead, and brings her home to live with his sister Dolly, her husband, Dick and their two girls, Alice and Cecily. In Alice, May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for the child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother witholds. But when the twelve year old is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, Alice is enrolled in a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her, and to control the whole family. Kathryn Harrison's poised and elegant prose tells a startling – by turns shocking and hilarious – story of travel and flight, the search for home and the need to escape it. Among scenes of astonishing beauty and cruelty, where traditions and cultures clash, tragedy threatens a world built on the banks of unsettled water – from the filthy, bustling waters of the Whangpoo River to the lake of blood in the Chinese underworld. 'This is a tale as absorbing and exciting as Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.' Sunday Express The magical tale of a young orphan's adventures after she flees rural China for turn-of-the-century Shanghai. From Kathryn Harrison, author of the bestselling memoir THE KISS. Beautiful, charismatic and destructive, May escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where, in 1899, she meets Arthur, an Australian. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet. Reforming May is out of the question, so Arthur marries her instead, and brings her home to live with his sister Dolly, her husband Dick, and their two girls Alice and Cecily. In Alice May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for the child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother withholds. But when the twelve year old is caught preparing her aunt’s opium pipe, Alice is enrolled in a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her, and to control the whole family.