Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: A lovely, tragic, strange self-lacerating novel. Harrison's talent deepens and darkens with each book. Where is the bottom?
Rating: 
Summary: Tepid
Review: A strangely listless novel by the author of The Kiss. Thewriting is stilted with some typically florid passages about lakes ofblood, etc. Expect the usual taboo father-daughter stuff, but with a Sino-Russian twist. Despite the multiple plot lines, there's little suspense. The characters are paint-by-numbers except for a lithping math wiz who seems cousin to Colin Harrison's bombshell math wiz in Afterburn. The sex scenes are bloody awful, though not as awful as the bionic sex scenes in Afterburn. The utterly predictable ending confirms that the novel's basically a Kate Chopin re-hash, so why not re-read The Awakening instead? It's a much better book.
Rating: 
Summary: Atrocities painted in pretty butterfly slippers
Review: After the first part of this book, I put it away, sat it down and wasn't sure if I wanted to pick it up again. The painful and constant violation of females scared me. How could it be that Chinese female children suffered the abuse of having their feet broken and folded so that they would have even smaller feet. May suffered the excrusiating pain with promise of reward, a husband who would love her. Instead the pain and violence only contintued as the fourth wife of her older abusive husband, she was constantly raped, sodomized and beaten. There was no reward. That seems to be the theme of this book. Suffering only leads to more, light seemingly put out at the end of this tunnel. A sad quiet story that still haunts me.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat of a letdown
Review: Although the author starts very strongly, she is unable to keep it going throughout the course of the story. The descriptions of turn of the century China are nothing short of enthralling. But, there are a couple of faults later in the novel: some extremely graphic (and out of place) sexual imagery that contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, and a climax that rings trite and hollow. Amy Tan does this subject much better....
Rating:
Summary: Not as satisfying as it could have been
Review: As a devout fan of Kathryn Harrison's writing, I was thrilled when I heard she had a new book coming out and fully expected it to be wonderful. Which it was, for the most part. The Binding Chair is beautiful and disturbing, full of details that startle the reader into an awareness of the characters and their location. I was especially entranced by Alice and her aggressive passivity. Perhaps that was the reason I found the book vaguely dissatisfying - Alice's character doesn't seem to have resolution. If the story had been told exclusively from May's point of view, the ending (which I won't give away here) would have been inevitable, and made perfect sense - but we are left with Alice, at the window, a character who over the course of the book has become less herself rather than more herself. I closed the book wishing it had gone on for one more chapter. As always, the writing was exquisite, the plot line shocking, the most painful events told with a detachment that is almost poetic. I had the privelege of attending a book reading for 'The Binding Chair' last year - if you ever have the opportunity to hear Kathryn Harrison speak, do it. She's amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Emanicpating Read
Review: As usual, Kathryn Harrison proves her talent of controlling and weaving a story with seductive and alluring words to develop intuitive characters. The beauty and strength Harrison portrayed through May gives readers a novel describing the passions and struggles in relationships with the self, lover/family, and society. A Must Have for ANY Harrison fan.
Rating:
Summary: Emanicpating Read
Review: As usual, Kathryn Harrison proves her talent of controlling and weaving a story with seductive and alluring words to develop intuitive characters. The beauty and strength Harrison portrayed through May gives readers a novel describing the passions and struggles in relationships with the self, lover/family, and society. A Must Have for ANY Harrison fan.
Rating:
Summary: Lurid fun
Review: Despite what others might say (including that reviewer from Boston who seems to have read a completely different book, and manages to describe in the vaugest of terms), The Binding Chair is a terrific, literary page-turner, filled with tales and history that I was surprised to find as compelling as Harrison makes it. And best of all, there seems to be a real undercurrennt of dark humor that pops up from time to time. The footbinding sequence itself will be something you will find hard to shake.
Rating:
Summary: I love the culture clash in this book
Review: HArrison writes about women with such clarity. Their lives are never just what you expect. Like May, the heroine in her new novel, her inner life goes beyond the imagination of what you intially expect a women from China with bound feet. And then the strange friendship with her husband's Jewish family. Like Exposure, this book is written in a style that makes you feel that no stone is left unturned. You really are going to know all there is to know, but it is all revealed in the way one reveals secrets.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but disappointing.
Review: Having read Isabel Allende's "Daughter of Fortune" where bound feet are described from a Chinese man's point of view, I was interested in the impact of the binding on a woman. Although the book dealt with the subject (in my opinion less than satisfactorily), the characters were rather unsympathetic and flat while the plot felt strained. In trying to write a serious book, Kathryn Harrison missed instilling the humanity and warmth in her characters that would have held together an overly complicated plot line.
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