
By Amy Tan
In her startlingly sensual new tale, “Rules for Virgins”—the first fiction she has released in six years—beloved bestselling writer Amy Tan (“The pleasure success Club,” “The Bonesetter’s Daughter”) takes us deep into the illicit global of 1912 Shanghai, the place attractive courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of rich gents. For the ladies, the competition is lethal severe, a deadly online game of monetary survival that, if performed good, can set them up for all times as mistresses of the wealthy and trendy. there is not any room for blunders, in spite of the fact that: erotic energy is tough to accomplish and tougher to keep up, in particular within the loftiest social circles.
Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, previously one in all Shanghai’s “Top Ten Beauties” and now the consultant and attendant of Violet, an aspiring yet green courtesan. Violet could have the adolescence and the attract, yet Magic Gourd has the crafty and the data with out which the more youthful girl is bound to fail. those historical methods of the alternate aren’t written down, notwithstanding; to move them directly to her scholar, Magic Gourd needs to achieve again into her personal expert earlier, bringing her classes alive with tales and anecdotes from a profession spent captivating and manipulating males who must have identified larger yet hardly did.
The global of sexual intrigue that Tan unearths in "Rules for Virgins" really existed as soon as, and she or he spares no aspect in recreating it. yet this tale is greater than interesting (and occasionally stunning) ancient literary fiction. along with inviting us within a existence that few writers yet Tan might conjure up, the intimate confessions of Magic Gourd upload as much as one of those army handbook for the conflict of the Sexes’ woman opponents. The knowledge conveyed is historic, particular, and undying, exposing the workings of shallowness and folly, calculation and wish that outline the mysterious human middle.