Our Lady of Kaifeng: Part One: Volume 1

I am rarely so engaged in a novel that I go back and get Volume One after mistakenly reading Vol 2 first. This is an intriguing story from a gifted writer with an intelligent plot and hilarious moments. And like all the best comedy, it deals with those character traits and historical moments that are not funny at all. I have to say that if you read Vol 1, Volume Two is not just a continuation of the story. It expands, explains, and explodes what we learn in the first novel; is just as irreverent, if not more so; and it is well worth the click of that mouse. . . .Our Lady of Kaifeng is by far the funniest novel I have read in a long time. It takes a lot to make me laugh.

This novel is boarding school fiction at its finest, or perhaps a satire of boarding school fiction? Unlike most stereotypical novels of the genre, it is linguistically sophisticated, sparkling with a fascinating collection of international characters. I have enjoyed reading the somewhat scandalous adventures of the American virgin- mother Marah Fallowfield as she travels with her daughter in China in the early 1940’s beginning with a teaching position in a missionary school in Kaifeng for girls run by an order of Catholic nuns. Like the popular Northern Irish Derry Girls sitcom, this novel is set in a historical period of political unrest. At the end, the Japanese, who have invaded China and are now at war with America, take Marah, her daughter, the nuns, and the lay faculty captive. The imaginative humor is mostly based on contentious repartee, character naming, and linguistic nuances that may be lost on some readers, but there is an undercurrent of authenticity and good-humored satire in the misunderstandings between the earnest Chinese students, the idealistic, albeit subversive, American teacher, and the conscientious sisters, with a lone Hungarian priest and linguist adding spice to the cultural mix. An especially brilliant chapter that adds religious syncretism to the novel depicts events during the Chinese Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival. Marah is led by the priest to a Jewish enclave in Kaifeng where some lost Torah scrolls have been located. The chapter is based on a little-known historical fact -- the settlement of Jews in Henan dating back to AD 600. On the Moon Festival, Marah participates in a Sukkot feast and discovers that the missionary school principal is a member of the family she is visiting. All the while, Marah’s unrequited love for the rather prim Latin teacher strikes a melancholy note amid the multi-national, cross-religious, missionary school assemblage.

This was a highly enjoyable read with eccentric, engaging characters. Picture an accessible Name of the Rose, or possibly Da Vinci Code for grownups.