The Joy Luck Club

Rating:
Summary: A very remarkable novel about families, amd friends.
Review: There are not many books you finsih and immediately and want to re-read, but this is one of them. The Joy Luck Club is a beautifully written novel, which is about the lives of four Chinese women and the lives of their American-born daughters. From the story, each woman tells their own sotry through flashbacks to the lives from there past. And now how they all struggled to make their daughters recognize their Chinese heritage. Later on we may discover a very odd relationship between a mother and a daughter that we have not experienced before. Overall, I think this is a very good book and everyone should give it a try.

Rating:
Summary: A tear-jecker by Amy Tan
Review: It's a really touching and gripping novel about four broken-hearted women in China who went to American more than a half century before. They all suffered untolerable and great pain with their marriages and families in China because of social inequalities. It's a conincidence that the four Chinese women all married in America and each of them had a daughter. The mothers had great expectations towards their daughters, hoping them to be talented and cheerful. Yet, their daughters turned out to be the miniatures of their agonizing lives in the past. It's a novel about family love, and how motherly love helps to struggle through the difficulties each of the characters was facing.....generally speaking, it's a worth reading novel.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing, heart-felt story that was hard to put down.
Review: Amy Tan truly is a prodigy! Her style of writing is captivating. One of her books, The Joy Luck Club, was unforgettable. It told of four Chinese women who left China during war-time in hopes for their future American-born children. Each mother and daughter had their own significance along with their own triumphant stories. Tan told the different stories in such a staggering way that, at times, it was difficult to differentiate the few characters. I realized that each mother struggled with associating with their daughter during atleast one point of the book. One daughter, who's mother had died, was on a mission to find her long-lost older sisters while fumbling with remembering her mother. Another daughter, who's mother was unemotional and very demanding, struggled with pleasing her mother. The third mother-daughter relationship was with Ying-Ying and Lena. Ying-Ying had always kept a distance from her daughter Lena and became completely secluded at times. Lena found it extremely difficult to understand her mother and they incessantly dealt with their undeniable separtation. The last bond was between An-mei and Rose. They were always surrounded by unanswered questions about eachother's past experiences. Each mother along with their daughter were examples of worldly, venacular relationships while also showing Chinese customs and culture. I recommend this book to anyone, man or woman, with great certainty.

Rating:
Summary: I though it was a good book over all
Review: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan was a good book. It was a little confusing, and it was hard to tell what was going on. It was very different than what I had expected, because it is not a very cheery story. It was a slow reading book. When I picked it up, I wanted to browse through it it a week or so. I could not get through it quickly. Everything that is said is important. You need to remember what is said at the beginning to understand the end. It had confusing characters. It was hard to tell which daughter belonged to which mother. It was nicely explained, though, and it had a good format. It was very different from what I expected. It is not much like the movie. The movie seemed happier. It was not the kind of book where everything is all better at the end. It was unbelievably sad. Every prediction that I made turned out to be wrong. The half and half section by Rose Hsu Jordan was a good example of thing being so sad. Rose was watching her little brother when he fell in the water. They looked all over the beach for him, but he wasn't there. They finally decided to go home. The next morning The mother and the daughter went back to the beach to find their missing brother, he was not there. I was surprised by this. I thought for sure they'd find him. It was a pretty good book. It was hard to put down, and to stop reading. I would give it four stars because it was not the best book I had ever read, but it was not the worst book I had ever read. It was a little confusing, and very different from what I expected.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful enchanted stories between mother and daughter
Review: The Joy luck club was a wonderful novel to read.This amazing story keep me from putting the book down,wanting to find out what happen on the next page. It is about these four Chinese women in the 1940's trying to start a new life in America with their American born daughters. Leaving behind their past in China. This story show the powerful relationship betwen mothers and daughters.The problem that had develop between these mothers and daughters had brought them closer to each other. As time past these mothers gradually told their daughter about their life in China. I cry and laugh while reading this novel. The most important is that I learned about my own culture. Tori

Rating:
Summary: Every mother and daughter should read this book
Review: This novel, so beautifully written by Amy Tan, provides the reader with a glimpse of, not only the Chinese culture and heritage, but with the challenges that these women experienced during the late 1940's. One of the reasons one might become so partial to this novel is because almost everyone can relate to one of the issues that a character is facing. I would recommend this novel to almost anyone, but especially to mothers and daughters. You learn so much from this novel.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing book
Review: After the first time I read this book I knew that it was something special, I just felt like I was missing something. Then I read it a second time and I realized more and more interesting things about the mothers and daughters. This is definately a book that you can read easily again and again... and get something new out of it each time.

Rating:
Summary: good book, better movie
Review: Throughout this novel Amy Tan does a magnificent job describing in great detail each character. Unfortunately, the book jumps around so quickly from character to character that it gets rather confusing who's who. After living in Hong Kong and doing some thorough studies on women in China, I found that this book was very accurate on how they were treated. Of course, not all women were treated, or are treated, in such a manner today, but this story helps people see how SOME women were seen as inferior. Nowhere in the book does she state that all Chinese women were treated in such a cruel fashion and I find it offending that so many people took this story the wrong way and commented on how it was not an accurate overview of women in China. Maybe not, but it's not meant to be a factual book. After watching the movie I found that this is one of the slim cases where the movie beats the book. The characters become much more real, making it less confusing. I also found it to be extremely emotional. I cried with the movie, not with the book. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys reading; however if you like getting to the point of the story in a hurry, I recommend the movie. I do think that the movie and the book should be read and seen because then you get a clearer picture of what the author is trying to get across.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I really loved this book! I read it in almost one day, it was just captivating. The descriptions and characters were great and the stories were funny and thought-provoking. I think that this book says a lot about mother-daughter relationships of any race. I did a term paper on it so I had to read it twice and research it, and I came away loving it even more. The one negative thing I will say about it is that it seems like a book that only girls would like because it is about feelings and relationships, and there isn't a lot of action.

Rating:
Summary: An autobiographical fiction
Review: I have read The Joy Luck Club several times, and I am now doing my senior report on it. I find constant connections to Amy Tan's life. Besides being an inside look at Chinese-American culture, it is an entertaining story. The characters are real and developed, and the conflicts are both believable and interesting. I recommend this book to anyone whose literary diet does not consist solely of sci-fi and thrillers.