China Dolls

See brings her “Sex and the City”-meets-historical-fiction act to World War II-era San Francisco, focusing on three young women who come up together on the “Chop Suey Circuit” — all-Asian nightclub shows for mostly white audiences. The setup is familiar, with each girl a type: Helen comes from the traditional family of a well-heeled Chinatown merchant; Grace escaped an abusive home in the Midwest; and Ruby is a scrappy climber, a Japanese dancer “passing” as Chinese. They pledge everlasting friendship to one another, only to see their bond suffer the ravages of fame, time and war, particularly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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There’s also a boy to fight over, of course, and some serious spotlight hogging. The book can get a little soap-operatic, and each woman telling her story in the first person occasionally makes for some confusion, since none of their voices are truly distinct. The best bits come in the details, the way the girls simply accept being exoticized sex objects as the price of being an “Oriental” dancer — and often play to stereotypes in their desperation to be noticed. It all adds up to a fascinating portrait of life as a Chinese-American woman in the 1930s and ’40s.

Read more, please go to The New York Times.

CHINA DOLLS,by Lisa See
Random House, $27