Rating: 
Summary: Worth 4.5 Stars, A Wonderful Author
Review: Amy Tan presents here a wonderfully entertaining piece of work. The struggles, the family, the discoveries; it's all wrapped up very nicely in this book. It is well worth your time to enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Aahhh...
Review: All I can say about Amy Tan is that she is the most amazing author of our time. She completely captivates the audience with an impeccable ability. Tan makes you fall into her stories as if you were experiencing it yourself. The Bonesetter's Daughter didn't have the same heartwrenching tragedy as some of her other books but it certainly captures your heart. I think Ms. Tan lived a past life or at the very least, experiences the ghost visitations she so often writes about. Ruth, the main character, is so similar to the average woman. Her troubles with relationships from a previous marriage, her worries about an aging mother, trying to keep her love alive and the constant critism of herself. Who doesn't have one or all of these things going on in their own life? By digging up her past and the past of her ancestors, she finds that inner peace and consolation. I found that the ending had some ironic humorous tones and even laughed out loud at one point. The best part of this book was the lesson that you should never underestimate the ones around you. I read this book in one day.
Rating:
Summary: Slow at first...
Review: I really liked this novel, although the beginning was a little slow and I felt like it wasn't going anywhere. I got into it when Ruth started telling her history, and then I really got into it when we were learning about LuLing's history. I've read all of Amy Tan's books and this one is probably my second favorite (after the Joy Luck Club).
Rating:
Summary: I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.
Review: I read the Joy Luck Club as my first exposure to Amy Tan's writing. I thoroughly enjoyed it then, but after reading this, I'm beginning to see a pattern in Tan's writing.You have a Chinese-American daughter who doesn't understand or appreciate her mother's odd superstitions and customs. As the mother ages though, the daughter eventually learns her mother's whole story, and learns to appreciate where her mother is coming from. The daughter discovers that her mother is a remarkable woman and deserves her respect. With her newfound respect for her mother, their relationship grows stronger, and you have a sentimental ending. That said, while Tan seems to cash in on same themes in her writing, I still think it works. The story contained in The Bonesetter's Daughter is engaging, worthwhile, and tragic. This book held my interest well and as such allowed me to finish it in less than a week. This book is well constructed - with LuLing's (the mother's) story contained between two sections involving her younger daughter Ruth. While Ruth and her live-in boyfriend (with his two daughters) struggle to stay connected, Ruth has to deal with a mother who is increasingly unable to live by herself and manage her own affairs. Ruth is wearing out as her mother, her boyfriend, and her work all demand her attention. She moves in to take care of her mother and in their old house is faced with her childhood memories. One night she discovers many pages of chinese calligraphy her mother had written years ago. Unable to fluently read her mother's story, she hires a translator to reveal her mother's secrets. The translated story reveals the truth about LuLing's upbringing and ancestry in rural China, her adventures in love, and her struggle to escape during World War II. When Ruth finally learns all of this, her life seems to fall back into place, but I'll leave the details for you to read the book yourself. I think this book is a worthwhile read for a Christmas break - a good escape from reality for a brief time, and who knows - maybe you can learn something about your own family relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Another Fine Novel by Tan
Review: I always know I'm in for a treat whenever I pick up an Amy Tan novel. After first hearing of her through The Joy Luck Club movie, I have always looked forward to reading her books and especially for The Bonesetter's Daughter. The story is a wonderful tale of a mother-daughter relationship, a particularly strong skill of Tan's. Ruth is a modern American woman, ghostwriting for several New Age and self-help novelists and living with her long-term boyfriend Art and his two teenage daughters. Ruth's mother, Lu Ling, is an aging landlady who is having more and more trouble communicating with anyone except her daughter and her sister, Gao Ling. Lu Ling's memory is slipping, causing Ruth no small amount of worry. Eventually, Ruth moves in with Lu Ling, as much to take a break from her life and get an objective glance, as to take care of her mother. Ruth is finally able to look beyond what her mother seems to be and to learn of Lu Ling's origins in China and how and why she came over to America. I just can't get over what a richly textured novel Amy Tan wrote. Each chapter is a delight, and in particular, Lu Ling's story was extremely moving and heartfelt. I strongly recommend this novel to both mother-daughter groups and fiction book clubs. I would also recommend *Year of the Smoke Girl* by Olivia Boler as a follow-up.
Rating: 
Summary: Weakened story-line through the use of flashback
Review: Weakened story-line through the use of flashback in The Bonesetter's Daughter
The Bonesetter's Daughter, written by Amy Tan, tells the story of family relationships between mother and daughter in conflicting cultures. These conflicts are emphasized by the use of flashback to subject the reader to the skewed world of these relationships. Yet this does not create an atmosphere of understanding and patience within the reader, but confusion and annoyance.
Amy Tan creates her novel by using flashbacks to highlight every single struggle, disagreement, sadness, and resentment between the mother and daughter. Yet this does not create a welcoming atmosphere for the reader, it instead makes the reading experience one of confusion and frustration. The literary device of flashback should be used to aide the reader in unclear moments throughout the novel, or to provide a basis for the plot. But the use of flashback in this novel does nothing of the sort. It makes the novel seem choppy and unclear, and provides no consistency for the reader to follow. Random historical moments are thrown into the story-line, which have no purpose to the story itself, and have no significance to the plot.
Furthermore, The Bonesetter's Daughter has a weakened, choppy, and undeveloped plot throughout the story, which makes the reader have trouble in understanding the purpose of Amy Tan's actions in creating this novel. The random jumps from adulthood to childhood to 100 year old historical accounts make the reading dull and confusing, and gives no clarity of the plot. In retrospect, the novel was not worth reading, and created a dull and worthless environment for the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Great potential but disappointing
Review: This book is built around an interesting idea. Ruth, a Chinese American childless woman in her late 40s discovers her mother's history when she finds out that her mother has Alzheimer's. By learning about her mother's descent from a bonesetter's daughter and her difficult early life, she better understands who her mother is and who she is. Unfortunately though, it reads like an early draft, in need of more work in order to truly bring the readers into Chinese life. It pales compared to Wild Swans. A book with great potential, but overall, disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: The Bonesetter's Daughter
Review: Amy Tan is at the top of her form with The Bonesetter's Daughter, and no other author does justice to the intricacies of the mother/daughter relationship like Tan. She is the master at taking details of Chinese culture and presenting them in a universal way that all mothers and all daughters can recognize. The Bonesetter's Daughter takes place alternately in present day San Francisco and in 1920s China, where Luling struggles through a life cluttered with bad luck. With her Americanized daughter, Ruth, in northern California, Luling still feels stifled and afraid by the bad luck she is certain plagues them. Even as an adult, Ruth feels the weight of her mother's worries and guilt-ridden lessons. When Ruth learns that Luling has Alzheimer's disease, she realizes that she must come to terms with her feelings for and about her mother. But first she must learn the truth about her mother's earlier life in China. This is a heartrending novel for mothers of daughters or daughters of mothers. How many of us have had to learn that when our mothers are criticizing us they are really loving us? How many of us have yearned to know the truth of our mothers' past, who they were before we were in the world? There are many universal truths displayed throughout Tan's fiction. Her novels show that though daughters do not wish to repeat the patterns set by their mothers, they are almost certainly destined to, that is, unless they make the conscious decision to release the pain and longing. As daughters we inherit our mother's weaknesses, but as adults we can reappropriate weakness into strength. A longtime fan of Tan's, I was thrilled reading The Bonesetter's Daughter and could not put it down. Universal, honest, achingly true, Tan's straightforward prose speaks to the strengths and the weaknesses of the timeless bond between mothers and daughters.
Rating:
Summary: It's been said, but...
Review: I'm probably repeating the same thing everyone else has already said but... I've read all of Tan's books and while they're quick, easy reads they've begun to sound disturbingly the same. It's always a mother-daughter issue cloaked with "ancient Chinese secrets" and dysfunctional cross cultural communications. The Bonesetter's Daughter has some original ideas that could have been developed in many different ways. The main character is a ghost writer and Tan uses this to tie in Chinese mysticism in what could have been a very clever storyline. But instead, it's merely a very interesting idea hidden beneath a worn out framework. I'd like to see Tan attempt something new.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not as good as I've heard.
Review: In this tale, a modern day writer discovers her mothers journal and has it translated. The story shifts from present day to the past of the mother, and then back to the present. Although I found parts of the book interesting, it consistently failed to hold my interest. I'd rather invest my time into something that grabs me. Do I have any specifics to illustrate why? I understood some of the metaphors and symbols, and I also understand that some of the content reflects the author's life, but I think I've found fuller descriptions and illustrations of life in other cultures elsewhere--maybe I just don't relate to this one.
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