Born a Chinese Manchurian Princess to Prince Su and his concubine, Eastern Jewel embodied all the connotations her Chinese name carried. Her lfe’s adventures rendered her a precious, indispensable yet also sadly an ornamental figure in early 20^th Century Chinese society despite her outrageously liberal behaviour.

This biographical account of Eastern Jewel's life is based on facts but Lindley has employed fiction where historical gaps emerged in her research. Eastern Jewel's life is described in the first person, in chronological order right until her last hours in a deathly prison. Her life is as exotic and varied as the dishes that headline each new chapter, but each chapter name pinpoints a significant moment to come in that section and often these moments involve betrayl.

Eastern Jewel, banished from her Chinese home after spying on her father taking a young mistress, is transported to Japan where she is adopted by Prince Su's Japanese adviser, re-educated as a Japanese civilian and renamed Yoshiko Kawashima. Here the seeds of her ambition to become wholly Japanese are planted and her lifelong struggle, and ultimately her life's failure, would be to prove herself to its people.

For a time her life's daring plans are shattered and her true position as a woman who is has no right deciding her own future is reaffirmed. Promised to a Mongol prince, a brute young man named Kanjurjab, she is sent to the barren Mongolian landscape 'like a sack of good rice'. Nevertheless her cunning nature leads to her escape where she begins a revitalised life in Tokyo, under a new name, with new acquaintances, opportunities and sexual escapades filling what would have been otherwise a mundane existence for other women of that time.

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel is not only a story of one woman's rejection of the rules instilled by society to govern a her life, or of Eastern Jewel's sexual exploitations, which among other achievements, promoted her to an high military position: an unthinkable rank for a female at that time. Eastern Jewel's life is a sad and complex struggle to belong, not only to a country that will clearly never accept her as a daughter, but to another soul she can share her existence with.

Lindley's writing is clear, concise, and at times cold - exactly how one would imagine Eastern Jewel to have spoken. The reader is left detached from the characters, permitted to form their own opinion based on their actions and the facts presented. Yet it is hard not to feel sympathy for a troubled figure as Eastern Jewel. Each new chapter confirms yet another person who discounts her presence in one way or another. From a young age her misunderstood nature decided the course of her life's path and she "embraced the modern way wholeheartedly, hoping that it would lead to a more exciting life in the world outside".

Reading the novel, Eastern Jewel comes across as a contemporary female Casanova. Practicing sexual liberty yet maintaining a cool control over her prey, she understands that men merely viewed a woman as an object. Many may argue that she was a high class prostitute but she simply used her sexuality as a weapon for survival in the male dominated world and became a warrior. To an extent the book acts as a Taoist manual for women. Many times Eastern Jewel shares her secrets for survival and manipulation skills; "I learnt early that to know other people's secrets was to have power over them". All the issues explored are still socially relevant; since Eastern Jewel's first sexual encounter where she was selfishly taken for a man's pleasure, only eighty years have passed. Clearly not enough to move the rigid barriers between men and women.