Rating: 
Summary: Complex relationship betw Chinese mothers and daughters
Review:
The always complex relationships between mothers and daughters seems to be even more so between Chinese mothers and daughters - and most extremely so when the daughters are American-born. Amy Tan's multi-layered family tale is set against the backdrop of her mother's progressive Alzheimer's and the confusion of past with present that is a recurring and ever-worsening problem for both the mother, Lu Ling, and her daughter, Ruth. Much of the tale is told through a series of journals Lu Ling kept when she was a young woman in China, and the comparison between her situation then and now is poitnant.
Not quite The Joy Luck Club, but very, very good.
Rating:
Summary: Tan Successfully Explores Mother-Daughter Relations Again
Review: Like many people, my introduction to Amy Tan was her novel, The Joy Luck Club. Thus, I was unsurprised to find another story, still exploring relationships between mothers and daughters, over time, culture changes, and intangibles that somehow seemed to keep a perceived chasm in their ability to communicate with one another. This story of a Chinese American woman raised by her mother- who had come alone to the United States believing in the certainty that she and her child were doomed. It is also about the attempts of her daughter to understand her mother and herself. The book is excellent, though I heard it on cassette tapes. I believe this made my experience of absorbing this story much richer, because one professional actress delivers the narrative, and the voice of the daughter's story, and I believe the voice of the mother, telling her story is read by the author herself. This enhances the book because of the pronounciation of the Chinese words, spoken correctly by both readers, the faint accent of the mother, and the frequently humerous hysterical imitations of the mother's english. It's an excellent book especially for those of us daughters seeking to understand both our mothers, and through them, ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Betrayal and ghosts and a curse through the ages....
Review: Amy Tan has done it again in this novel. She's captured the
experience of being a Chinese-American daughter in cultural clashes
with her Chinese-born mother. And she tells a fascinating story that
moves between modern San Francisco and a rural China in the
1920s.Ruth Young, in her mid-forties, makes her living as a
ghostwriter for self-help books and is going through difficulties with
her live-in boyfriend and his children. Her mother is in the early
stages of Alzheimer's and Ruth is watching her gradual decline. But
when she comes across a memoir her mother started writing years
earlier, it not only brings up her own memories, but she starts to
understand her mother better through the gradual revelations of the
family secrets. The chapters about Ruth set the stage for the core
of the book, which is the story of LuLing, the mother. We learn about
the bonesetter's daughter, the terribly scared nursemaid named
Precious Annie who raised LuLing and the connections between the
generations. It's a story of betrayal and ghosts and a curse through
the ages. It's a story of relationships between sisters and teachers
and mothers. It's the story of healing and hope and redemption. And
it's all so interesting that it's hard to put the book down. Ms. Tan
is a fine writer. She brings out some universal truths about a world
I'm familiar with as well as those of a world that has vanished and
can only be recreated by the skill of the author. Her sense of place
is extraordinary and she puts the reader right into the skin of the
characters, building the story gradually and adding telling details at
just the right moments. I was swept right into it and found bits and
pieces intruding on my thoughts until I could get back to it later.
It was 353 pages but I wish it had been longer.
Rating:
Summary: Sticks and stones ...........
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
Rating:
Summary: my first Amy Tan - excellent
Review: Five stars for this book, which I listened to unabridged on tape, narrated by Joan Chen and Amy Tan. It's disappointing to read other reviewers feel this book is too similar to Tan's other works.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I think this is the best book Amy Tan has ever written! It is better than her other books, which are great too. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A MESSAGE TO CERTAIN OTHER REVIEWERS
Review: I would like you to know this is a great novel. Amy Tan is excellent. Everybody knows that. But how dare anyone "tear out" a chapter of a book because of "raunchy" language? You have no right to personally edit someone else's creation. That's appalling You should be ashamed of yourself :(
Rating: 
Summary: Good/not so good
Review: Ms. Tan has given us another muti-generational story about mother and daughters. Let's get right to it: The middle section of this book which tells the mother's story of her life in China is superb. This section is a marvelous mixture of myth and reality and is beautifully written. When will Amy Tan give us an entire book like this? And there are other nuggets of good writing in this book, especially when she's writing about writing. But.....haven't we seen this story before? Mother-daughter conflict, unhappy relationship with live-in boyfriend, self-worth problems. Since I've read Ms. Tan's previous books, this all seemed pretty familiar to me, almost formulaic. Overall, the book seemed to have a number of interesting ideas that should have been developed more fully. For example, is this a book about memories, about secrets, about language, about caring for aging yet independent parents? Any one of these ideas deeply and insightfully developed would have led to a better book. As a wonderful professor once told me, "say more about less."
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful story of three generations
Review: Ruth Young's life is in turmoil. Her interest in her live-in lover seems to be waning and her relationship with her mother, never an easy one, seems to be getting more difficult as her mother slips into Alzheimer's disease. Ruth is a ghost-writer and that seems to be symbolic of her, because she writes about others but she cannot seem to establish a life of her own. All of this changes when her mother gives her some manuscripts which are titled "Things I know that are true" and "Things that I must not forget". Ruth has the papers translated from the original Chinese and as she reads them, her mother's life becomes real to her and the secrets which her mother has kept are at last revealed. Learning about her past, Ruth can then begin to heal in the present. Although the culture in the book is Chinese, the themes are universal and the ideas of redemption and healing are truly uplifting. Amy Tan is a wonderful story-teller who writes from the heart and who has a unique ability to touch her readers.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing for the most part
Review: Tan is a talented writer. I find her style to be both interesting and funny. I was disappointed to find bad language, though, and I'm going to tear out chapter 6 before passing the book on to my aunt. It was a little raunchy.
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