Rating: 
Summary: For Anyone
Review: She's just a good author for all types of readers.
Rating: 
Summary: stereotypes galore
Review: I thought this book will be very intruging. WELL IS STINKS.
1st, there were no main characters, which adds on to confusing.
2nd, it is so stereotyped! Here is just a bad example of a another stereotypical view of the Chinese. Buy this only to destroy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Extreamly Good.
Review: This is a wonderful piece of literature! It is a book filled with differant storys mostly about mothers and daughters. It is a masterpiece and I reccomend it to anyone who wants to read an extreamly good book.
The book is a collection of about a dozen stories about Mothers and Daugters. All of the stories are fantastic and heart warming. The first stories are mostly of the daughters and then the last stories are mostly of the mothers. Not one of the stories in this book was a bad story. I am very sad to see that many people are saying that it was a boring book, please dis-regard the people saying this. They etiher did not read the book or are very easily bored. The book is not boring at all! It is very intriging, you wont belive how the pages turn, story after story, it just keeps getting better and better. The book was not that long, less than four-hundered pages, but it must have taken Tan a while to right because the book has so many stories!
When I review books I usually give a summury, I cant very well do that with this book, The book had to many stories to tell you a summery on all of them, so I will tell you a summery of the most memereble one's.
One of my favorite stories in this book was the story of Jing-Mei Woo, she is a very strong person that had to deal with the death of her mother. Before her mother died she told her that she was not the only one of her daughters. Up until this point Jing-Mei Woo thought she was. Her sisters live in Hong Kong and her aunts give her money to see her, at the end of the book she goes to see her sisters. This was probebly the best story in the book.
Another story I enjoyed a lot was the story of Lena St. Clair. Her story is about her and her wierd husband. She puts up with a lot of her husbands unfair things until her mom comes to visit. Her mom gives her the confidance to stand up to her husband, it is a touching story.
I wish I could tell more about the stories, but it would take up far too much space if I did so I will just tell you this, YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! It will surely be a classic that people will be reading 100 years from now.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpeice.
Review: There are some barriers to enjoying this wonderful book. It may be hard to understand the dialogue and some of the themes if you are not Asian, and the names are important to following the story, and are all Chinese.But beyond this, you could not imagine a better book. After I finished it, I called my mother crying. Although your mother will probably never cut flesh from her arm to feed her own dying mother, become a man's third concubine, or leave her twin babies on a path, you may read this and find a new appreciation for what she has given you. Tan deftly manages the development of eight characters, when one seems to be overwhelming to many other authors. She tells both sides of conflicts, reaching into each character's weaknesses, and helping them find their strengths. She paints a vivid picture of modern America and a China past that is spellbinding. But best of all, she depicts love gently and fully. This core human emotion takes on new forms and dimensions under her talented pen, helping the reader to see love where it might not have been apparent. This is a riveting insight into Asian culture. Although the term "As far as the east is from the west" can denote great distance, this book helped me to realize that my western self can be very close to my eastern mom in ways I never imagined. This book helped me understand and appreciate her more fully, and I hope you will read this book, and call your mother or guardian crying too. Get your copy from... - always a wonderful experience!
Rating:
Summary: Amy Tan's Best- A True Masterpiece
Review: I read this book when I was far too young to understand the intricacies and the delicacies that are found throughout this novel. Having reread it recently , I came to a conclusion: The basic story is so simple, almost anyone could write a story of mothers and daughter, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could have written anything nearly as well as Amy Tan has. With stories about women who were strong, women who kept secrets, and even more, this book captures not only the relationships of the 8 women, but also of any mother and daughter. My mother recently payed me the same compliment that June's mother did to her. She told me that "my heart was best quality." I sincerely thank Amy Tan for writing a story which has undoubtedly made mothers and daughters connect or reconnect to each other.
Rating:
Summary: When worlds collide....
Review: I almost stopped reading this novel in the early going, and it is not the type of novel I would normally select to read. But idle time around the swimming pool and chance discovery of it at the bottom of my carry pack put me back on track and I am the richer for it. Joy Luck Club is a family saga written with the perspective of a person who seems much older and wiser than one would expect from Author Amy Tan in this first novel. In this portrait drawn from life, there is structure rather than plot. The structure is the telling of separate tales of two generations of Chinese-Americans who have emigrated to the United States. The older, traditional Chinese "aunties" who are depicted in the book are filled with old world wisdom and the bitter skepticism which comes from hardship. Their lives are based on time-honored traditional concepts, their utterances hinting of the shapes of formal philosophies like Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Tao. These introverted crones are often a source of embarrassment to the newer generation of Chinese adapting to American food, customs, manners, and most of all, to the plethora of choices which confront Americans. The world of ancestor worship, obedience to parental dictates, and to arranged marriages is anathema to second generation Chinese who, like their Caucasian counterparts, inhabit a world of fast-food restaurants, romantic love, and social mobility. Amy Tan has a sharp eye for the sometimes clamorous humor resulting from the clash of generations and cultures. It is both funny and touching the way one of the old mothers views the trendy, modernistic design of her daughter's house. It's designer tables and accoutrements are seen as whimsical and flimsy, like the marriages and relationships falling down around the younger generation's ears. Hazards and evil omens are apparent everywhere in the eyes of the old school traditionalists as they sharply criticize the dangerous objects positioned in unlucky and haphazard fashion, without regard for feng shue (sp?), the propitious (and perhaps obsessive) arrangement of objects in harmony with human spirit. Indeed, in Amy Tan's novel, human spirits are inclined to fall down into toilets or roll off of roofs or step on their own feet. The collisions of tradition and superstition and the "modern" generation are everywhere in this novel, but the stories are told with love, not the cloying love of American television series, but the kind of subtle, firm, and abiding love that comes from hard lessons learned. The "Joy Luck Club" is a small group of elderly ladies, the modern equivalent of the American Garden Club. The relationship between the members of the Joy Luck Club and their daughters and other relatives is the thread that ties these disparate tales together. The saddest, most tragic thread of their joined lives leads to a remarkable reunion when the author and her aging father fly to China to meet the author's long lost step-sisters, abandoned as infants along the road while their mother fled the brutal Japanese invasion of that country.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting look on women and mother-daughter relationships
Review: It is true that mothers and daughters are irreversibly bonded by blood. However, one cannot define a mother-daughter relationship simply by stating they share blood. The relationship is infinitely more complex and as unique as the DNA the two are bonded by. In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, a set of mother-daughter relationships is displayed for us through the words of women, both mothers and daughters, and their lessons learned through family and well as their own imperfect existences. The stories are intriguing because they portray the women not as superhuman but as human, as flawed and pained as any person. The relationships between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club are both cold and warm at the same time, blatantly portraying the gap in generations and the gap in American versus Chinese culture. Silence and outward disagreement surfaced often between the two. Much of the time the women seemed more like strangers or enemies than family. Lena and Ying-Ying often seemed to be closed off to one another, and Ying-Ying outwardly disappoved of Lena and Harold's marriage. The same can be said for June and Suyuan, who incited arguments over June not trying hard enough. The younger American generation barely understood the older generation, and though the American women seemed more career saavy and modern, they also seemed much less respectful. Despite a seeming gap in understanding, there was love between the mothers and daughters, but this love rarely showed all the way through to both parties. For example, Lindo cared very much about Waverly but thought that Waverly was ashamed of her, and at the same time Waverly thought that her mom was using her to fulfill her own dreams and to show off but wanted to be accepted by her. The two cared about each other, even though they often found the other one to be painful. The mothers and daughters loved each other, but both parties never seemed to be in the same frame of mind, due partially to age and partially to culture. Tan's attention to small details in culture helps to deepen the reality of the story. In particular, there were many details and important occurrences surrounding special foods, such as the soup cooked with the flesh of An-mei's mother's arm, the poisoned dumplings that An-mei's mother ate to free her daughter, and the steamed pork dish Lindo makes and Rich dumps soy sauce over. Culture was also brought out when surrounding the treatment of women in China. The treatment of wives and widows was disturbing and yet the painful traditions that the women suffered through did not deter them from wanting to keep alive their Chinese heritage in America, particularly through the continuation of mahjongg games and the demands of obedient daughters. Adversely, the American culture showed through in the younger women in their belief in change and their strength, especially seen in Rose when she tells Ted she is keeping the house in her divorce. Culture played an important role in the lives of the women, and the understated splashes of ethnic color added to the stories the women told. Most profound, however, was the portrayal of the women as human beings. The women were not extraordinary in the sense that they did not win medals for bravery or any sort of Nobel Prize, but despite seeming like ordinary people they had weathered much and lived to tell their sad tales. Perhaps all of us have had relationship problems or have lost someone special to us, and the stories are ones that we can easily relate with emotionally. Emotions were amplified in many of the stories, especially those of An-mei, Suyuan, Lindo, and Ying-Ying, but their sadness was one that we could understand and relate to. Also adding to the realism of the novel was that none of the women went without a serious personality flaw; Lena did not stand up for herself against Harold, Suyuan pushed for her daughter to be perfect, Lindo found fault in everyone, and so on. This made the novel more believable, and it also heightened the interest in the characters, as they were not just characters in a book but real people.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Enchantment!
Review: Wow, this is an amazing tale. I absolutely could not put it down. I stayed up until I finished it, even though I had to wake up early the next morning. I cannot recall reading such a story as this, I was definitely wooed. This is a simply written bittersweet saga of four Chinese women and their daughters. I was enchanted by these wonderful and courageous women of the East from the very beginning. I could see and hear everything that they told. Their pain was my pain. Their joy, my joy. Amy Tan has a wondrous way of opening your eyes, so that you can see into the souls of these women. Never has the hardships of such seemingly frail women affected me so. I became riveted with anticipation of more to come. I truly loved this tale of love and woe. All I can say, is if you have not read it, do so now. You will not regret it. In fact, I am positive, that you will never forget these enchanting people ever.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, crisp
Review: Through the stories of these Chinese immigrant women and their daughters, Amy Tan gives us a story that everyone can access: the story of the past and the future meeting in the present through the relationships of parents with children. I was astonished to find my own view of my relationship with my parents changing as I read the book. I found I could actually understand better where my parents were coming from. Now that's a powerful book to convey that sort of universality!
Rating:
Summary: A first novel that'll make anyone who writes jealous
Review: This is the third of Amy Tan's four novels that I have read and reviewed here at amazon.com, all in a few weeks time. As a result of these reviews, amazon.com's "New for you" list divides my suggested reading material into two categories; books written by women and books written by me, which I think is pretty funny. You don't need me to tell you what this book is about or that Amy Tan is an author of great magnitude. Let me tell you instead that I have been reading her books in reverse, beginning with "The Bonesetter's Daughter", working through "The Hundred Secret Senses", and finishing with "The Joy Luck Club". I've rated all three with five stars. I'm glad I read these books in reverse as so much of the thinking that come to the surface in her later works can be found in "Joy Luck", but might have gone unnoticed had I begun with this book. The roots of her interest in writing children's books are easy to find here, but Ms.Tan's later writings about reincarnation also surface here. She has been criticized for expressing these beliefs in her later works as if this idea was something new to her, but it is not. On page 213, for example, a grandmother teases her baby granddaughter for laughing and she says "O! O! You say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again?" Reincarnation. But also, on page 83, as the adult Ying Ying St. Claire contemplates how she had lost her way in life; she recalls what she had asked The Moon Lady for as a child. "I wished to be found", she says. As a child she had been lost and "wished to be found" in a literal sense. But as an adult, whom did she wish would find her? What, exactly, was that wish? Who is she waiting for? How long has she been waiting? And then again, back to the literal, in speaking of her mother's twin daughters, she says that "All these years, while they waited to be found,..." This author is waiting, but for what? For who? Till when? Will she know when she's been found? On a lighter note, what is this reoccurring story about the marriage her female characters are involved in with a husband with whom they split all the bills? Is this some common thing that no one told me about? NOW you tell me? My wife should be going to work and earning the money to pay for half of my ice cream? NOW I find this out? Please tell me this is not common behavior. How about the salt issue? What is with this "too much salt", "not enough salt"? We hear about the wrong amount of salt from book to book. I could tell you a story from many years ago about my Italian mother and a pinch of salt, but I won't. Of the three Amy Tan books I've read, this is the first one that gave me the sense that we were reading about Chinese people, specifically. The characters in the other books could have been anybody. China and the Chinese thing was trim. But even in this book the women could easily have been old-world Sicilian women and the mother/daughter relationships could easily have been mother/son. Trust me. I know this as well as anyone. There's more that is Old World here and more that results from generational and general culture clashes than is Chinese vs. all others. I discovered Amy Tan while on a walk through my den. My wife was reading "Bonesetter's Daughter". The book lay on a table, upside down, with Amy Tan's picture looking up at me. I saw the picture, asked who she was, and in spite of my wife's warning that I wouldn't like the book because this was an author who wrote "for women", I waited for her to finish the book and immediately picked it up myself. Had you told me that in short order I'd have read three of her books, leaving only one unread to maintain a sense balance in my reading, and that this Chinese-American woman who hails from California and is barely younger than I am would soon vie for position as one of my all-time favorite authors, I'd have told you that you had the wrong guy for sure. Guess what. I've never had anything for or against the author Stephen King. I tried reading one of his books once and it just wasn't something that interested me at all. I don't relate to the way his mind works. I've certainly never had any reason to envy the guy. But when I heard that he was friendly with Amy Tan, I have to tell you that my immediate reaction was to envy his ability to pick up the phone, give her a call, and tell her he would be happy to buy the wine if she'd answer a few of the dangling questions and fill him in on some of the secrets that lead to the kind of thinking that we see in these books. Oh well.
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