"The Interior" (by Lisa See)

The setting of The Interior is summer 1997—China "post- Deng Xiaoping", a period characterized by "an unholy alliance between post-Deng Communism ('market socialism') and American capitalism", the China of Jiang Zemin. In the novel the narrator speaks about the times in more personal terms: "As the saying went, the blade of grass points where the wind blows. The only problem was that the wind was blowing in so many directions these days no one could completely protect himself".

The plot centers on the conniving of American and Chinese businessmen to exploit poorly paid Chinese workers, especially women, for profit and power. See describes in great detail the dangers women face because they work in an American toy factory, located in a remote part of the interior of China, that lacks adequate safety protections and is a virtual fire trap. Miaoshan was working at the toy factory before her death. Elisabeth Sherwin quotes Lisa See speaking about the role of Chinese working women from a somewhat different perspective: "'The women making $24 a month in those factories are changing the face of China . . . They are making enough money to open up small stores in their home villages. These women are working at a free market economy and are providing an economic value they never had before.'"

At the end of The Interior Hulan and David solve several murders related to the toy factory. The novel begins with Hulan's friend Suchee and the murder of Miaoshan, her daughter. It concludes with the solution to the mystery of Miaoshan's death (which had nothing to do with the toy factory) and with her mother Suchee working in the fields, unable to forget her.

As in her debut novel, Flower Net, the strength of See's work here is in her detailed and intimate knowledge of contemporary China, its mores, its peculiar mixture of the traditional and the contemporary, and its often bedeviled relationships with the U.S. Here again are American lawyer David Stark and his Chinese lover, police investigator Liu Hulan; they become involved in the issue of working conditions among women in an American-owned toy factory in rural China--a highly promising and original notion. Stark's law firm wants him to supervise the buyout of the American entrepreneur who launched the toy company, while Liu is called in by the mother of a factory worker who seems to have committed suicide. What actually happened to her, and why? It seems inevitable that the lovers will be pulled in different directions by their opposing interests, and soon Liu has introduced herself into the factory as a worker, while Stark's deal, important to his career, begins to unravel. So far, so good; but as the action becomes increasingly violent, with another girl's sudden death at the factory, gunplay, a deathly sick Liu struggling to survive, and a climactic fire that takes hundreds of lives (a calamity treated almost as an afterthought), it becomes apparent that See has plotting problems. Many story threads seem to disappear, the action scenes are stagy and unconvincing, and the David-Liu relationship never seems to generate much real warmth. A pity, because until the melodrama takes over, much here is original and fresh, an absorbing look at an unfamiliar world