3.5 ( )

Really more a two and a half. Buck shares her slant on Chinese politics and ideology in the mid-twentieth century. Madam Liang and her three American-educated daughters provide different lenses through which the changing culture and nation are portrayed.

Evidence of the author's agenda moves this novel into a much less engaging and personal set than her classic The Good Earth. ( )

En plena Revolución Cultural, uno de los periodos más convulsos del régimen comunista de Mao, Madame Liang regenta en Shanghai un restaurante en el que ofrece a una selecta clientela, de ricos comerciantes y mandatarios del gobierno, los platos más delicados. Frente a las consignas de los Guardias Rojos y la supuesta austeridad del régimen, continúa ocupándose de su trabajo y de sus tres hijas, Grace, Joy y Mercy, que estudian en Estados Unidos. A través de las peripecias que componen el argumento el lector contemplará dos mundos paralelos pero muy distintos: la China eterna y la China revolucionaria.

Even in her lesser works, Pearl Buck serves as a good storyteller, someone who always manages to keep you turning one page after another. Three Daughters of Madame Liang is not among those lesser works, although neither is it among her best efforts. It's a good, solid novel that covers the era in Communist China from just before the Great Leap Forward to the midst of the Cultural Revolution. It does so relying on Buck's unique manipulation of time, which compress events into a time frame seemingly much shorter than that over which they actually occurred. This yields the occasional deliberate anachronism, such as mini-skirts in New York City during the removal of Soviet technical specialists in China, something that could not have happened later than 1960. It also imparts a sense of the timeless to events that are historical fact. Despite the fact that it contains a long series of soliloquies on political and philosophical subjects, Three Daughters retains the engagement of the reader. And all in one straight read. There are no chapters or dividing parts.

The story of Madame Liang is a familiar one, that of the revolutionary devoured by the serpents she herself has spawned. This is not a reference to the daughters but to the next generation of revolutionaries who consume all that went before them, ever radicalizing themselves, until mass murder and social anarchy is the result. Along the way, Madame Liang has come not only to doubt herself and her beliefs but to reverse them, becoming a defender of the old Confucian ways dumped into the garbage bin during the years following Sun Yat-sen's overthrow of the old dynasty. The aging voice of Liang we can safely take to be that of Buck's. For it still defends China, its culture, and even Chinese hegemony over neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, Korea, and parts of Russia. Buck was always a China Firster, and never was that more clear than in this novel. It's not the nationalism or racial arrogance of the Han she finds fault with but the ideological regime that cannot see a way to come to terms with Buck's other home country, America.

Seen against the the backdrop of contemporary events and relations between the United States and China, I can't help but wonder what Buck would make of it all. In large part, the solution to defeating ideological totalitarianism she alludes to throughout Three Daughters came to be applied in American foreign policy following Nixon's opening to China. The subsequent era of free trade and cultural exchange that followed was something Buck advocated. And where has it left the world? With a menacing China so intent on controlling the thoughts of its people that it now issues social credit ratings. A marriage between capitalist means and heretofore unimaginable totalitarian fantasies. What would Buck think? And which country would she side with? ( )

This is the story of Madame Liang, from the "old school." The story takes place shortly after the Communist Revolution while the country was being led by Mao. Madame Liang had sent all 3 of her daughters to America when she knew the revolution approached. Two returned eventually as they felt a duty to their country. The book is about the trials and tribulations of those 2 daughters. The book was predictable, if one knows about communism; a good book nonetheless. ( )