The Olympian

Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: News

Lisa See's first novel, "Flower Net," was nominated for an Edgar Award for best first novel. She is the critically acclaimed international bestselling author of "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan." She is also the national bestselling author of "On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family."
See's newest novel, "Peony in Love," has been recognized as a bestseller from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and more. In addition to writing novels, she was a West Coast correspondent for 13 years through Publishers Weekly and currently writes as a freelance journalist when she is not working on novels. See said she loves to do research and she travels to all of the places that she writes about.
The OC Bookstore found out about See's book-signing tour when they joined up with West Sound Reads-a group of independent bookstores in the West Sound that donates 10 percent of their profits to the literacy council. A list of potential authors was presented and West Sound Reads had to choose which author they would like to have visit and then detail the type of venue they would be able to provide for them.
"I had to actually go and convince them to have this event," said Charmaine Mello, OC assistant bookstore manager. "I had to go to this meeting and say we can do it at Olympic College, we've got the beautiful bookstore, we open up to a beautiful student center, we can accommodate 250 people."
Mello utilized on campus resources for this book-signing event. Media Services was hired for the technical work and sound system. The OC foundation lent their backdrop to attach banner-sized posters of See's novel, "Peony in Love." Mello also worked with the culinary department to allow the coffee cart to stay open an hour later for the event.
She said OC Program Coordinator Debra Montez and her crew set up the BSC with the seating and podium. The entire bookstore assisted in the event and the West Sounds Reads group was there to assist as greeters and ushers.
See read from her new novel, "Peony in Love," and then talked to the audience about how the novel came to be. She also was available to answer questions the audience had before ending with a book signing.
See said the idea for "Peony in Love," came to her seven years ago while researching a piece she wrote for Vogue magazine about Lincoln Center's full length production of "The Peony Pavillion"-a popular and controversial opera written in 1598, that was immediately censored before its official ban in 1868. She said that she read that young women grew obsessed by this opera which was said to cause lovesickness and even death. While doing research for that article, she came across the story of the lovesick maidens-three wives all married to the same man one after the other, who upon their death bed would write commentaries on the opera along with their thoughts on love. The third wife later published these writings.
"It was the first book of its kind to have been written and published anywhere in the world, written by women," said See.
See's website describes "Peony in Love" as being about the bonds of female friendship, the power of words, the desire that all women have to be heard, and finally those emotions that are so strong that they transcend time, place and perhaps even death.
It took See seven years of circling around the idea of "Peony in Love," before its completion.
"I like to think that is a good thing," said See. "Because when you do decide to write a book it's sort of like getting engaged. You're hoping for the best. That this is going to last however long it takes to write the book. But also, you will hopefully be talking about it and thinking about it for the rest of your life, so it better be something you really love and are passionate about."

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