Money and the scramble to get it are at the center of many of our best novels, and this is nowhere truer than in the work of Jane Austen. The financial security that Austen's heroines are always chasing is so inextricably entangled with courtship, love and marriage that one can lose sight of the pound notes (not to mention the plantation slavery) behind the lilies, lace and wedding veils.
This is never the case with the world Eileen Chang presents in the tales that constitute "Love in a Fallen City." Think of her as Jane Austen with the gloves off.
"Aloeswood Incense," the first story in the collection, opens with "Ge Weilong, a very ordinary Shanghai girl," arriving at the home of a wealthy aunt who, having been a rich man's concubine, is estranged from her respectable family.