Continuing to read F Tennyson Jesse's The Lacquer Lady--

Continuing to read F. Tennyson Jesse's Lacquer Lady.

Very skillfully done, before there was a category called Creative Non-Fiction.

Well known people such as Kinwun Mingyi have walk on parts, and Supayalat is a major character in the novel.

I can't figure out if FTJ disliked Burmese, as Orwell seems to have done--to me, she seems more even keeled in her dislike of everyone--

and she does some wonderful analyses of kala-town in Mandalay (where the whites lived)

and "the great white world"  "the hard white world"

the little minds -- of almost all the women

She did a lot of research and I actually did not know some of the things she talked about, such as, the pages being called labeyay taw set

tea servers.

And there are some interesting sightings

a prince from Hispaw, a child, in the palace garden, a hostage--

all filtered in 3rd person limited point of view.

Now, people who don't know better, some indeed still teaching classes, call this "mind hopping"

but in a book/s with many perspectives this is wonderful and of course Dickens, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo did it all the time--

FTJ's main characters such as Fanny (based on real life Mattie Calogreedy) are not very likeable, nor are Supayalat and her horrible mother, yet FTJ goes often into what she calls "her little head"  "her little body"  "her Alompra forehead"
and shows those small petty evil calculations.

It's a lot more engrossing than any narrative history that is told, not shown.

Taingda Mingyi appears to have had the cruel personality I thought he had, from his photo that I have seen.

I did not know that Kinwun Mingyi spoke French and probably English too.

I do know Hpanchet Wun (Glass Factory Minister) was fluent in French.

I have got to the point in the story where the palace orders a large quantity of red velvet.

Burmese will know why.

Stay tuned, folks, stay tuned.

KMKaung
11-4-2014