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Summary: Judging book by cover
Review: I like this book very much. It remind me of days spent in China when I was little girl. Ms Tan is very good writer and you will enjoy.
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Summary: Wonderful book about the lives of women
Review: Amy Tan weaves her magic again in her newest novel "The Bonesetter's Daughter." She takes the life of a woman Ruth Young, and chronicles how her mother's past has influenced her own future. Ruth Young is a ghostwriter who, throughout her whole life, has felt like something is missing. Her Chinese mother falls ill with forgetfullness and Ruth is forced to take care of her. Upon cleaning her mother's house, Ruth finds a set of papers that her mother has written in Chinese. The wonderful story of LuLing and Bao Bomu unfold as Ruth translates the beautiful story. The story is absolutely great. I couldn't put the novel down. It gives the reader a great look into Chinese culture and also the culture of women. We see how one life affects another, starting with "Precious Auntie" and continuing all the way down to Ruth herself. Without giving away too much of the story, this book is awesome. Amy Tan is an excellent writer. She makes us feel close to the people she writes about. We feel for Ruth and LuLing. We can understand their pains and the happiness. I would suggest that anyone who liked the movie "The Joy Luck Club" should read this book and all of Tan's books. You will not be dissappointed.
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Summary: Good reading for insomniacs
Review: This book was extremely boring and I stopped reading it after a few chapters. The characters didn't interest me enough to care what happened.
Rating:
Summary: A Wondrous Book
Review: Amy Tan is an exceptional writer and more importantly an exceptional storyteller. This book is so wonderful and so moving that I finished it in one day. Soul, heart, and magic are what make up this novel. You feel every moment of this story. Our schools should make this required reading...for the history, the racism, the love and reapect for our elders. A wondrous book.
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Summary: Nothing new in Tan-Land
Review: Let me first start by saying I truely enjoy Amy Tan's work. When I heard about the release of this book I was first at the bookstore to get it. Upon reading it it is clear that Amy Tan is running out of original ideas. Reading this book you almost feel as if you are reading Kitchen God's Wife. All her books seem to center around the same themes of women in China who rise above their situation and make it to America where they reflect back upon their lives. If you took all the covers from the Amy Tan books off, closed your eyes and put any cover on any book, you would pretty much still be reading the same story. The books read the same, only the titles are changed.
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Summary: Another cross-cultural multi-generational gem from Amy Tan
Review: The Bonesetter's Daughter is a wonderful example of Amy Tan's considerable skill as a master storyteller. Here she exposes to us, layer by layer, the deeply complex relationship between Ruth Young, a ghostwriter of self-help books, and her mother, LuLing. Realizing she is having problems with her memory long before Ruth suspects it, Luling painstakingly writes the facts of her life as best she remembers it, so that her story doesn't die with her failing memory. The start and finish of this novel, which chronicles Ruth's struggle in coming to terms with her mother througout her life and Ruth's stumbling upon LuLing's memoirs, frame the middle section of the book, which consist of the memoirs themselves. I found the novel absolutely fascinating, and read through it in a single sitting. Two mother-daughter stories are presented here, as the relationship between LuLing and her mother are also central to the telling of this wonderful story. Amy Tan does a superb job of presenting these separate yet connected narratives into a masterpiece of a book, blending character, dialogue, and narrative seemlessly (and seemingly effortlessly) together. Readers of the author's previous novels will find similarity between The Bonesetter's Daughter and her previous novels. Some readers, as I, will find everything comfortably familiar. On the other hand, it is only fair to criticize the formulaic sameness of her work. The repeated exploration of the relationship between a Chinese-born mother and her american born daughter is a bit off-putting; as is the parallel telling of two generation's narrative. Also, I don't find that her male characters are realistically drawn, and the relationship struggles between the daughter and her significant other (at least in Ms. Tan's last two books) seem rather superficial. These (admittedly) rather minor complaints are the only thing that keeps me from giving the book five stars.
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Summary: Another Amy Tan Rehash
Review: I received my copy of Amy Tan's latest with expectant breath..hoping and praying that this novel would tread new waters.... How disappointed I was...and as an Asian American, it was even more disheartening.... I truly believe that Tan has talent....in the scenes that describe the bonesetter daughter's world, her life, her destruction..those passages take on mythic proportions and are easily the best features of the book. But EVERYTHING else is a thinly veiled reprise of all of Tan's past writings...the seemingly-nuts-but-really-really-she's not-mother, the loud, obnoxious and dimwitted Auntie, the semi-successful daughter who seems to almost reject her Asian upbringing, the mandatory Caucasian boyfriend who just doesn't seem to understand, the evil Chinese man from the old country.... These stereotypes are almost a disgrace... I have never been an Amy Tan fan...but each time a new novel comes out, I cannot help but hope that this writer, who I do believe to be talented, will take a RISK and break away from those xenophobic stereotypes that populate her books. ...
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Summary: Amy Tan at her FINEST!
Review: Once again, Amy Tan, with her words brings you into a glorious world past and present. No matter the prosperity or the poverty, as in all of Amy Tan's book you feel, smell, touch and hear all the experiences shared by the mother's and their daughters. Yes, this is another book about mothers and daughters and nobody does it better than Amy Tan. I don't even want to write anything that will take away from the true experience that the reader will have as she travels down the paths of these women's lives because to experience this voyage in it's purest form you must experience with your own heart open and without being influenced by others opinions. All I can say is once again....Amy Tan..Bravo
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Summary: GREAT AUDIOBOOK
Review: AMY TAN AND JOAN CHEN MADE ME LAUGH AND MADE ME SOB IN THE SPACE OF MOMENTS.I HAVE NEVER BEEN AS MOVED.IT IS AN EXERCISE IN PERFECTION.MISS TAN REVISITS THE TERRITORY INTRODUCED IN THE JOY LUCK CLUB AND NOW IT IS EVEN MORE RIVETING.THIS WAS THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME.
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Summary: My Review
Review: Chinese New Year just seemed to me to be an auspicious day to review this book. However, unlike the majority of the literate portion of the world, this was actually my first Tan novel, and although it rambled a bit in places, I found it quite similar to Chinese cuisine - satisfying while in progress, but leaving you hungry in a few hours.
Sorry to say that after finishing it just a few hours ago, I can't remember very much of it, even though I clearly recall finding certain parts quite intriguing.
The relationship between the generations of women was a key issue, backed up by as much calligraphy as was found in the movie "Hero", and included a National Geographic type-special on Peking Man and his/her bones.
Ruth Young is dealing with a career, a family, and a mother in the early throes of dementia. Her fiercely independent mother has kept a diary, to remind her of the rich, troubled and life-changing events that shaped her life, and ultimately her daughter's life. It is into this diary that Ruth plunges to find the missing piece of her past that has eluded her for so long.
Ruth's dealings with her mother are nowhere near as intriguing as the relationship between her mother and the woman who raised her, and some of the stories could be called "My Big Fat Chinese Family". Very noticeable is that men do not feature here as key players, relegated to being either gentle support figures, brutes, or dumb animals.
Not a bad book to start the Year of the Rooster, but nothing to crow about either.
Amanda Richards, February 9, 2005
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