The Bonesetter's Daughter

Rating:
Summary: not Tan's best
Review: I've read all of Amy Tan's books, and while I enjoyed this one, I would say it's my least favorite. It just didn't get me like the other ones did. This latest book is about the turbulent relationship between Ruth and her widowed mother LuLing. Ruth has never really understood why her mother acts the way she does, but when LuLing begins to show signs of Alzheimers, Ruth begins to discover many things about her mother's past that have been kept secret for many years. The 165-page flashback of LuLing's early life in China is very good, but it's at the end of the book. It would have been better to read that whole flasback first, because it explained all of the mysterious and unexplained references in the first half of the book. I had to go back and re-read the first half again, now that I knew what everything meant. So, if you're a Tan fan, this won't disappoint, but it doesn't quite live up to her first books.

Rating:
Summary: You won't be disappointed
Review: Just as wonderful as Joy Luck Club. I love how Amy Tan weaves beautiful and complex stories about the relationships between mothers and daughters. I can't wait to read other books by this author!

Rating:
Summary: A story of a Chinese Immigrant
Review: The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

Amy Tan created another wonderful story about a Chinese immigrant in THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER. My third Amy Tan book, this one tells the story of Lu Ling, a Chinese woman who was raised by a nursemaid she knew only as "Precious Auntie", and lived with a family that she thought for many years was her own.

Lu Ling's story, however, starts in present day San Francisco with her daughter Ruth who works as a "ghost writer", creating books for clients who tell her what to write. She's single but lives with her boyfriend Art, who in turn has two daughters from a previous marriage.

Ruth is encountering problems with her mother - Lu Ling is starting to exhibit memory problems and weird behavior patterns. She claims she is one age, but Ruth knows she is another. She claims that her mother is one woman, but Ruth knows it's another. Seeing her mother fall apart leaves Ruth anxious and upset. And the fact that Art doesn't seem to feel this is his problem too, doesn't make it any easier for Ruth.

Ruth has problems of her own, mainly her life with Art and his two young girls, but with Lu Ling's health falling apart, she shifts her focus on her mother. While going through her mother's belongings one day, Ruth finds a set of manuscripts that she remembers were written by her mother. As she starts to slowly translate the Chinese characters, she realizes it is her mother's life story.

From this point, the book turns to Lu Ling's life in China as a young girl and what brought her to America all those years ago. We learn of Lu Ling's life with Precious Auntie, Lu Ling's first love, and the impact of WW II on China and her part of the world. The biggest impact on Lu Ling's life, however, was Precious Auntie, who was a bonesetter's daughter, a bonesetter being a type of medicine man. It was Precious Auntie's death that helped Lu Ling learn about her true heritage, and how important the nursemaid was in her life.

What happens to all of them is left for the reader to find out, but I would like to recommend THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER as one of my favorite Amy Tan books, next to The Joy Luck Club. Tan's novels about the Chinese immigrant ring true for me, and as a third generation Japanese American, I find that I can relate to the "Americanized" characters that Amy Tan creates in her books. Regardless of ethnicity or background, I highly recommend THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER.

Rating:
Summary: Tan rarely disappoints
Review: This novel was beautifully written. Amy Tan once again manages to weave storylines of modern Chinese-American women w/ those of earlier Chinese women. However, I have a hard time liking her Chinese-American women. They are so flawed, and usually so critical of their mothers, that I wonder what sort of terrible childhood, mother-daughter relationship Tan is working through with her writing. These American women, unlike their Chinese mothers, seem to blame everything on Mom (typical American?), while the Moms survive and usually gain a measure of success without ever laying blame on the backwards time or village they grew up in, they flourish despite wars, terrible husbands, and miserable families. Anyway, this novel was particularly interesting because the inspiration came from real life. Despite finding the strained mother/daughter thing to have been done to death by Tan (can you name a novel of hers where a tough mother/daughter relationship was not at the center?), I actually enjoyed this novel very much. The daughter's struggle with mom's dementia was particularly moving and well written.

Rating:
Summary: Just as Great as The Kitchen God's Wife
Review: The First book I read by Amy Tan was "The Kitchen God's Wife" and I thought that she would never be able to create another story as good as that one but she has in "The Bonesetter's Daughter." I love the way Ms Tan can write about the Chinese Culture, which I find extemely interesting and also create compelling Mother/Daughter relationships.

The story opens with Ruth Young, a 46 year old ghost writer who lives with her boyfriend and his two daughters, dealing with the fact her mother Lu Ling has Alzheimer's Disease.

While Ruth is taking care of her mother she comes across two packets of papers which she finds out later after they are translated is the story of "Precious Auntie," who is the Bonesetter's daughter and Lu Ling's natural mother. On Precious Auntie's wedding day her father and husband are tragically killed and later her face was burned and disfigured. She has a baby but is only a nursemaid to her own daughter while her in laws are considered to be the parents. When Lu Ling becomes of age the family is ready to marry her off to a family that Precious Auntie objects to and from there on the story really takes off with the way that Precious Auntie decides to stop the wedding.

I truly loved reading this book and I really enjoy Ms. Tan's writting style. I have read all of her books and I hope that she intends to write more. I recommend highly recommend reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully cultural story of mother-daughter connections!
Review: Although I am familiar with Amy Tan's work after seeing and enjoying the movie adaptation of THE JOY LUCK CLUB, this is the first time I actually read one of her novels, and it is definitely on my personal Top 10 List for 2002!

Amy Tan is an expert at portraying the complex relationship between mother and daughter from generation to generation. She also describes Chinese culture and traditions in a way that we rarely read about in literature. Her writing is so beautifully intriguing that I read her children's story, THE CHINESE SIAMESE CAT (PBS's Sagwa is based on this story), to my daughter last night and I found it equally compelling. Amy Tan has the ability to convey Chinese culture and traditions to every generation and I hope to read more of her work!

Rating:
Summary: --A carefully woven story with fascinating characters--
Review: Ruth Young is a Chinese American woman who lives in California with Art, her significant other. She considers herself to be a very contemporary woman, but she's so obsessed with the small details of life that she makes herself miserable. Although she's professionally successful as a ghostwriter, she feels that Art and his two daughters take her for granted and don't value her as a person.

LuLing, Ruth's mother has always been somewhat of a burden to her daughter. Ruth loves her desperately, but she believes that she and LuLing have never really understood each other. Her own name, Ruth has always been an embarrassing mystery to her because her mother has never been able to pronounce the name correctly Why would LuLing choose a name for her daughter that she really couldn't even say? Her life is filled with unanswered questions.

One day Ruth finds some pages written in Chinese that LuLing had written and given to her years ago. Her own Chinese is not up to interpreting the writing, so she turns to a translator for help in reading the pages. The story of LuLing's life in China is an amazing saga and the author beautifully explains the richness of the Chinese culture. When Ruth reads the transcript of LuLing's words, she finally understands her mother, and all of the mysteries in LuLing's life are revealed.

I especially enjoyed the recorded book because the author joined actress Joan Chen as a co-narrator.

Rating:
Summary: A Grave Mistake in Amy Tan's New Book
Review: Amy Tan has made a great mistake in her new novel "The Bonesetter's Daughter." The dragon bones, with inscription on it, were found in Yin Xu, He Nan Province, while the Pekin Men are located in the suburbs of Beijing. The dragons bones have nothing to do with the Pekin Men. They were characters left by people in Shang Dynatsty.

Rating:
Summary: a reliable, albeit formulaic story, that is well told
Review: Having read all of her previous writings, I was disappointed when I finished reading 'The Bonesetter's Daughter." Like a Harlequin romance, Amy Tan's latest novel delivers a reliable, albeit formulaic story, that is well told.

The novel is clearly written, in large parts, the dialogue is sharp, funny and brilliantly recalls my own set of 'aunties' and their various ailments. But the tale has less of a punch after reading her other stories. In fact, the plot line is not nearly as evolved as a Hundred Secret Senses. In this book, we encounter two main characters, (whom, I felt, had been directly copied out of the Joy Luck Club), Ruth, a ghostwriter and her mother, LuLing. Specifically, the novel discusses Luling's past, which includes the discovery of the Peking Man and her harrowing struggle through adulthood in China, as much as the story reveals Ruth's ordeal in balancing her own family, self-employment and her mother's rapidly declining mental state.

Other reviews have made much of the interaction between Ruth and Luling. As much as Amy has vividly documented the struggle between Ruth and Luling, this relationship is similar to all the previous mother-daughter relationships in her book and it seems that this is the only type of relationship that Amy writes about, a 'lost and wandering daughter', the 'sharp-tongued' mother' and their 'fraught with tension but loving' relationship.

What reviewers have failed to mention are Amy's observations of society, class, and the struggle by females in a society with they are viewed with much contempt. Luling's story is much more interesting based on the drama within her nuclear family and their struggle in/out of poverty.

Don't read this book for the mother-daughter relationship, read it to understand about the grinding poverty and the Confucian dictates on behaviour and their impact on lower-middle class in China.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent read!!
Review: Amy Tan has maintained her excellent status in my eyes with this work. It keeps your attention and gives a wonderful glimpse into Chinese culture, much like her other works. I recommend it!!