A beautifully written, timely, and suspenseful thriller set in modern-day China, The Interior is the second novel from Lisa See, whose fiction debut, Flower Net, was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and a nominee for the prestigious Edgar Award.
In Flower Net, Lisa See ripped away the veil from modern China--its venerable culture, its teeming economy, its institutionalized cruelty. In The Interior, she probes the mysterious layers of China's vast land and the powerful bonds of family, friendship, and history that run deep within the soil.
The Interior brings back the duo of Chinese police detective Liu Hulan and her lover, American attorney David Stark. This time, for Hulan, the case is alarmingly personal, unearthing her own buried past and a stunning network of violence and conspiracy.
When an old friend from a village deep within China's interior asks Hulan to find out the truth about her daughter's suspicious suicide, Hulan cannot refuse--even if it means going undercover in a newly built American toy factory linked to David's firm and finding her way into the heart of a dangerous mystery.
Meanwhile, David's new job has him trapped in a tangle of legal and ethical dilemmas. To extricate himself, he must first decide whom to trust and where his greatest duty lies.
A novel rich in atmosphere and charged with the complexity of Chinese and American relations today, The Interior explores the exciting and fascinating depth of China's most remote regions, where loyalty, greed, and love collide with terrifying consequences.
Lisa See writes books thinking people like to read...and follows an important tradition for American Women Genre writers, writing books about something which fits into a style which allows the reader to actually learn something.
The lives of Chinese women who make the toys which entertain your children do matter. And See has created a thriller which takes us inside the new China and shows how close it really is to us....
I find the characters, even minor characters, too thoroughly explained. Paragraph after paragraph explains the settings, the people, the impressions you should have of the people. There's not enough "thriller" in the plot to hold me. Also, much of the major plot elements are over-emphasized. It makes me feel as though she is trying too hard to lead the reader one way, probably in the hopes of then achieving a surprise ending. However, the only surprise for me is whether or not I'll decide to read the rest of it.
'The Interior' is really a breakthrough for me. I quit reading it less than one third of the way into it and couldn't care less how it turned out.
The plot? huh?
The characters? huh?
huh?
At least I didn't pay for it - I checked it out from the library and made a note in pencil on the page opposite the front flap, "this book stinks."
