Rating: 
Summary: Another Wonderful novel from Harrison
Review: I am hopelessly devoted to Kathryn Harrison. The Kiss and Exposure were great books. The Binding Chair does not disappoint. Harrison makes early 1900's China come alive. Her descriptions of foot binding and bound feet are detailed and horrifying.The main character is May, a Chinese prostitute with bound feet who manages to marry the brother-in-law of a British businessman living with his family in China. She quickly becomes a commanding figure in the house. The flashbacks to her foot binding and early marriage are fascinating. An engaging, gripping story.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: I enjoyed the first few chapters of this novel, but after a while the relentless shock tactics grew tedious. I disagree with one reviewer's comment, that Harrison avoids being political. Almost all the Chinese characters in this are sadistic and barbaric. While I don't doubt that the practice of wife beating, the torture of the girl in the marketplace and the practice of footbinding were commonplace in their culture, I'm not sure why Harrison couldn't have put in any positive aspects of Chinese culture to give a less one sided view. Instead we are left with the colonnial view that all Chinese at the turn of the century were savages and if that isn't a political point I don't know what is! Harrison's prose is breathtaking and she is an enormously talented writer. However, my gripe with this is that the non linear plot did not hold my attention and the ending was a dissapointment.
Rating:
Summary: interesting story but muddled ending.....
Review: I had read POISON and THE KISS by Kathryn Harrison, and really enjoyed POISON in particular. I was intrigued by the story she was writing of in THE BINDING CHAIR, and picked it up anticipating a mix of social criticism and historical drama. The book started out promisingly enough. However, the last few chapters when Mai is old and reminiscing about her early days, left me wondering where the author was leading the reader. The ending was strange, and it didn't seem to fit the book's intention. The author seemed to dash off a tragic ending, without giving it any development or real resolution. An OK read with a disappointing end....
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I hated The Kiss, and when someone recommended this book to me I nearly didn't read it. It's a wonderful piece with a great heroine. I was extremely impressed with the restraint Harrison showed when dealing with this material, it could so easily have gone over into grand guignol but that never happened. I couldn't put the book down and read it over one weekend. It's really impressive! I particularly enjoyed the central relationship between the Chinese woman and her niece by marriage--it was tender and convincing. As well, all the secondary characters were fully developed and interesting in themselves. I thought this was a standout piece of work, and after the sickly vagaries of The Kiss it's a wonderful surprise.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amy Tan story without Amy Tan charisma!
Review: I love reading novels about Asian culture and I have read all of Amy Tan's books as well as such masterpieces as "Memoirs of a Geisha". This book,while seemingly well-written and promising at its onset, left me flat (and slightly confused and depressed) at the end. I found that while the general ideas of family relationships and Chinese cultures explored in this tale were somewhat akin to those topics explored by Amy Tan (one of my favorite authors), the characterization and story line lacked Amy Tan's depth. May was the protagonist whose life seemed to begin with the cruel yet traditional binding of her feet when she was 5-years-old in China. If anything, Ms. Harrison brings to light the cruelty of this practice as well as Western ignorance of Asian culture. The foot binding was the only time I really felt sympathy toward May. ...And I didn't find Alice or any of the other characters terribly likable either. If you are craving literature dealing with Eastern Culture of the past and present, better to stick with books like "The Bonesetter's Daughter", "The Kitchen God's Wife", or "Memoirs of a Geisha".
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Summary: I tried to like this book...
Review: I loved Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss." It was a compelling and gorgeously written book about something absolutely unspeakable. I was so excited for this book when I started it. And the language is again, very beautiful. But, I found the structure confusing and unnecessarily complicated. She shifts back and forth in time with complete abandon, and it got to the point where I didn't care enough about the plot and the characters to go back and clarify any questions. I think the story has great potential for a wonderful book, but it needs a simpler treatment than the one it is given here.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read
Review: I read this book because I found the premise to be very interesting. I agree with other reviewers that the plot was somewhat disjointed and the ending a bit ubrupt. May, the main character, is by far the most interesting of the bunch. I pretty much skimmed through all the parts that revolved around the other characters. I believe the story could have been a lot more developed and one does feel a bit dissatisfied at the end but I'm not sorry I read it, if only for the history lesson in the brutal ritual of footbinding.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I thought this book was fantastic. It is a well researched book about colonial China. It provides wonderful and sometimes disturbing insight to life in China and the women living it. May is wonderful character full of mottle to strive on despite harsh beginnings and her bound feet. I love the narration and the characters. It is a very rich novel.
Rating:
Summary: A tapestry of China through a woman's eyes
Review: I throughly enjoyed Kathryn Harruson's "The Binding Chair" Characters were well developed, and the imagery was colorful and graphic. Throughout the book I could easily visualize the teeming city of Shanghai, the strong willed May and her neice Alice. I did find the introduction of late characters sort of confusing (Suzanne) and their effect on the outcome murky A great read for lazy summer days.
Rating:
Summary: A tasty literary morsel with bite
Review: I was completely hooked by "The Binding Chair." Kathryn Harrison has written a completely enthralling literary . . . I'm not sure what to call it. It's a mystery, it's a series of character studies, it is a study of the social mores of the late 19th/early 20th century, and it is ever so slightly rotten, which makes everyone and everything in it just that much more interesting. May-li is a Chinese woman with bound feet who has married into a British Jewish family living in Shanghai. Her story leads "The Binding Chair," and the others swirl around it in vivid detail. There's her sweet Australian husband with his love of social do-gooding, a lisping genius of a governess, May's niece, who takes her aunt's encouragement too much to heart, and a heartbroken Russian on the Siberian Express. I didn't care for the ending, but understand it. I would much rather have had the book go on.
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