Although, it worked within the novel's universe and the way it resolved actually made sense.Īt the end of the day Lydia doesn't get a complete happy ending. Lydia is able to track down her father and she sortof plays at seducing a higher up in the Communist Party who almost screws her over (doesn't it suck when you can't totally coast on your good looks?) and that particular scene seriously pissed me off if only because we've discussed before my disdain for rape as a plot device. He resurfaces and his and Lydia's relationship is just as yummy as I remember, though some might say his ability to sweep in and save teh day every single time Lydia needs him might be just a titch contrived. Chang stuck around China to help with the People's Revolution so he's pretty unavailable for comment for the first third of the book. It's a bit of a harrowing journey for Lydia for two reasons, 1) it's a pretty harrowing journey for anybody who's not used to Communist Russia to have to travel through Communist Russia and not get sent to a labor camp or shot, and 2) because she doesn't know if her lover from the first novel, Chang An Lo, is okay. Her half brother Alexei travels with her and she gets a protector in the guise of the big grizzly bear of a man from the first novel. Lydia Ivanova ends up going back to Russia to track down her father who is still alive and in a labor camp. This is the sequel to The Russian Concubine and even if I didn't like Kate Furnivall I would have picked it up just to see how the story ended. The Russian Concubine contains fictional characters and events, but Kate made use of the extraordinary situation that was her mother's childhood experience - that of two White Russian refugees, a mother and daughter, stuck without money or papers in an International Settlement in China. It was when her mother died in 2000 that Kate decided to write a book inspired by her mother's story.
She travelled widely, giving her an insight into how different cultures function which was to prove invaluable when writing The Russian Concubine. Then into advertising where she met her future husband, Norman.
Kate went to London University where she studied English and from there she went into publishing, writing material for a series of books on the canals of Britain. These values Kate explores in The Russian Concubine. Her mother, whose own childhood was spent in Russia, China and India, discovered at an early age that the world around us is so volatile, that the only things of true value are those inside your head and your heart. Kate Furnivall was raised in Penarth, a small seaside town in Wales.
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