| Title | : | The Bonesetters Daughter |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0345457374 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780345457370 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 387 |
| Publication | : | First published February 19, 2001 |
| Awards | : | Orange Prize Fiction Longlist (2001), International Dublin Literary Award (2003) |
In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter. When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion–all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLing in modern San Francisco. The truth that Ruth learns from her mother’s past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness.
The Bonesetters Daughter Reviews
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As an adolescent reader, Amy Tan used to be one of my favorite authors, yet, at the time, I did not appreciate the scope of her writing. One of my 2017 reading goals is to revisit authors I read during that time so as to fully enjoy their work. The Bonesetter's Daughter, an sweeping novel that takes a reader from California to prerevolutionary China and back again, is the second of Tan's books that I have read this year. A story featuring a strong mother-daughter connection that is emblematic of Tan's writing, The Bonesetter's Daughter offers readers a captivating novel in three parts.
Ruth Luyi Young is middle aged and still dealing with baggage of her youth. Although she has been in a stable relationship for the past ten years and has a successful job, Ruth at age forty six still grapples with her upbringing as an only child to a widowed mother. Throughout her life, Ruth has become known as a people pleaser while not taking the time to assert herself about her own wants and desires in life. As a result Ruth is in a long term relationship yet not married and ghost writing books instead of authoring her own stories.
Ruth's life undergoes dramatic changes when her mother LuLing is diagnosed with the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. Ruth's own life takes a back seat as she moves in with her mother and becomes her caregiver. While living in her childhood home, Ruth discovers a memoir LuLing had written seven years earlier when she first feared that she was losing her memory. Ruth takes the manuscript to be translated, and Tan takes her reader on a journey to pre-revolutionary, rural China.
Liu LuLing grew up in the village of Immortal Heart as the daughter of Precious Auntie, her Bao Bomu. Precious Auntie suffered many hardships including the murder of her father, a respected bone doctor, and her fiancé on the day of her wedding. Precious Auntie was already pregnant with LuLing at the time, and was taken in to life with her to be husband's family. Following LuLing's birth Precious Auntie stayed as her nursemaid, and never let LuLing know that she was her mother until it was too late to form real maternal bonds. As a result, LuLing has also been grappling with ghosts and curses for her entire life.
Tan provides the reader with a glimpse of life in Peking and Hong Kong before China became a modern country. One sees this in the orphanage run by missionaries where LuLing lives and the crowded streets of Peking and Hong Kong where she waits for her journey to America. Tan provides a contrast to life in China still dictated by Buddhist g-ds and practices to modern San Francisco where LuLing ends up, escaping the hardships that befell her in her youth.
Written in three parts, Tan creates a strong mother-daughter relationship in LuLing and Ruth as she offers similar themes in their childhood. Tan's mother daughter motif as well as the differences between immigrants and their children born in the United States is evident in her other books as well. She provides the reader with a modern feel good story as well as quality historical fiction all in one book. The Bonesetter's Daughter was enjoyable for me to revisit, and I look forward to spending more time reading Tan's novels. 4 stars. -
Amy Tan has a way of starting a story that's impossible to put down. For the first half of the book I kept wondering what about it made it so good. Anecdotal stories, relatable characters, Chinese folklore for interest ... these are all good, but I finally realized in the last quarter of the book why I liked it so much. Because it's a book about learning to love your past no matter how many scars it gives you, and learning to love and forgive your parents and ancestors, no matter what they may have done to your gene pool. It's a story about loving people the best way you know how, and believing that some day they'll know just how much you love them, and just how much you wish you could change your faults so you could love them better. But you hope that your feeble offering will be enough. And it's a story about accepting the feeble offering for the gold mine that it is ... not feeble at all. I learned a lot about myself and my family relationships through reading this book, and would recommend it to anyone who has a loved one they just can't quite relate to or understand.
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Amy Tan's books are like a fine wine: they're meant to be savored, to get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of each drop (or word) on each page.
I have yet to read a book that's worthy of anything less than 5 stars. Knock on wood, let's hope it stays that way.
Ruth is a 46 year-old professional woman with a busy life of her own: she has a successful but demanding career, a live-in boyfriend with whom she has a complicated relationship, 2 step kids who are bratty (imho) for most of the book, and finally, an elderly mother who may have some serious health issues to face.
Her mother LuLing has one foot planted firmly in her past; her roots are in China, and she has spent a lifetime coming to terms with what happened there before she moved to the United States after WWII.
There are things she has revealed to her daughter, but only in Chinese. Ruth is forced to come to terms with herself, her boyfriend and her mother.
This book is broken into 3 parts, with the middle part going into LuLing's history in war-torn China. The fluidity of Tan's writing is so superb, and her ability to weave a tale that's written so perfectly is simply wonderful.
Tan is a master at writing about history (she offers richly vivid depictions), complicated issues, multi-generational conflicts, redemption, forgiveness and self-awareness.
I can't say enough good things about this book. My only regret is that I didn't read it sooner. -
Audiobook….read by Amy Tan and Joan Chen
…..11 hours and 51 minutes
It’s been years since reading an Amy Tan book — [this is the first time I’ve listened to one of her books] …..and I was inspired to download the library audiobook after my friend Alli shared with me of loving it.
It was a terrific audiobook at that.
I’ve great memories meeting Amy Tan — on a movie set in San Francisco of all places.
This is an inspiring story of struggles with self discovery- self acceptance-cultural differences between being in China born and Chinese American born —
Fascinating family history- (Mother’s tragic story in pre-revolution China), society pressures of sexual biases-secrets, betrayals, love, loss, hope, and forgiveness.
At times very funny. Nude yoga anyone?
Other times - pretty sad. With Ruth’s mothers’ health decline from Alzheimer’s. Disease, (the sadness of her memory loss was so real)….
And…
Ruth’s grief and regret from years of anger, resentments, and criticisms she had towards her mother begins to breakdown. (also very real)
And as Ruth comes to understand her Mother’s past (get to know her mother as the person she was before being her mother)— her heart opens and we see how love and forgiveness begin to unravel organically.
Mom’s favorite ice cream flavor was Rum Raisin….
Paul and I use to share a pint of it every night when I was nursing our first child -
Oh the ‘good-old-days’ of babies in the house and ice cream after-dinner treats!
There are a million wonderful things I could say about this book…
But I think what I most want leave other people with is if you really do enjoy listening to audiobooks — this was an enriching - enjoyable- one!!!
The very beginning I felt was a little slow to fully be the great train ride it becomes — but once past the beginning it’s marvelous…. and the storytelling comes very ‘alive’.
Intimate - and heartfelt in the most humanitarian ways.
Lovely novel!!!
Note…. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to engage in anything written by Amy Tan.
I loved being back in San Francisco—nothing like the ‘at home’ feelings from settings in our home area’s…
An easy 5 star rating!!! -
While I loved the LuLing's story I can't say the same about Ruth. I was fascinated by Luling's story and equally bored by Ruth's. I think I skipped few parts just to reach Luling's parts. It was beautifully written telling us about Chinese culture and story itself was mesmerizing.
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This is a chronicle of voicelessness across three generations of a Chinese family: it captures how these women lost their voices, why they continued to be voiceless, and how they attempted to reclaim their voice. Voice in this book is both literal and figurative: it's about standing up for oneself, speaking one's truth, being acknowledged, being understood, and not being censored. And the perpetrators who claim the women's voices can be cultural, personal (through the violation of one's secrets or body), cross-cultural, as what happens to the youngest when she finds herself in a relationship with a man who already has two Caucasian children, and even professional, as what happens for those who choose to give voice to others' ideas but not their own (as ghostwriters). And not incidentally, it is also a book about ghosts who remain with us from our past, haunting us with their curses or benevolently giving us advice about our current choices. Serendipitously enough, this book made me proud to be part-Chinese, but also sad that there was so much about Chinese culture and especially its writing and its calligraphy that I cannot understand. But in the end, it inspires the reader to speak out, to express appreciation to relatives, to insist on being heard in one's relationship, and to rediscover the paths of their ancestors. It may sound corny, but this book was an incredibly moving read for me, unsettling me and making me question my own experiences at its more difficult passages.
On a general note, however, please stop titling book's The Blank's Daughter. From the abortionist to the gravedigger to the bonesetter, I'm tired of women being defined by the occupation of their father. What shall I title my memoir? The Senior Health-care Analyst's Daughter? Hmm. . . . Regardless, after Joy Luck Club, this is definitely Tan's most powerful novel. Bravo.
Some passages that struck a chord:
There's a lovely discussion on someone's favorite word, vapors, a passage too long for me to quote, but very thoughtfully done (pgs. 20-21).
"A lot of her [mother's] admonitions had to do with not showing what you really felt about all sorts of things: hope disappointment , and especially love. The less you showed, the more you meant" (p. 92). Or in my own mother's case, the less you showed, the more you were in control of your feelings, your effect on others, and the situation involved: a misguided philosophy I took years to unlearn, though I know it's hopeless to convince my mom of the error of her affective formula.
"'You can have pride in what you do each day, [. . .] ut not arrogance in what you were born with" (p. 250).
And lastly, "It broke her heart to see her mother trying so hard, being so conscientious, do determine to be valuable. Making her mother happy would have been easy all along. LuLing simply wanted to be essential, as a mother should be" (p. 301). -
A gorgeously crafted novel on secrets, sacrifice, and finally finding the ability to speak one’s truth. Told in raw honestly, we see the cycles of silence and trauma caused by grief and anger. We also see the winding journey of finding one’s way back to family, to one’s inner self. A perfect blend of heart ache and healing, of revelation and forgiveness.
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Hmm - I re-read this and clicked on Save because it has been taken out of circulation?? Why?
I enjoyed this - very much in fact; and I was surprised because it's not my usual fare - I don't go for "Bestsellers". Tan splits the story into three sections told by mother and daughter - in first person, which works well. Ruth is second-generation Chinese/American, and her story comes first, set in 2009. She tells us about her very difficult relationship with her aging mother, Luling. The second part - set in Immortal Heart village, rural north China is Luling's story of her growing up, and the traumatic story of her mother, Precious Auntie. The name of Ruth's grandmother is finally recovered in the last part of the story - Gu Xian Lin - which I think is meant to symbolize the possibility of recovery; of being able to re-write a positive present even from terrible injustices in the past. The final part returns us to San Francisco, in the present day.
I have to say I LOVED the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters in both of the main sections. In fact I wanted to run to Amy Tan and say - someone finally speaking the truth about the difficult relationship most women have with their mothers and possibly vice-versa - I can't comment here because I only have a son. Anyway what I wanted to say to Tan - is YES - the truth at last - we love and hate them in equal measure, which we find confusing and disturbing.
A note on the narrative style - Tan focuses on the story - there is no fancy writing - it is plain - 'this is what is happening/this is what happened' true, fast-paced narrative style. But be careful reader there is plenty of irony and nuance in this 'plain' style.
Allow me to reproduce a neat little scene where - Luling and the other orphan children are requested to paint over the Buddhist and Tao statues at the request of the Christian sisters from America - who run the school/orphanage.
One day, before Christmas, when it was too cold to go anywhere, Miss Grutoff decided that we should convert the Chinese gods into Christians. We would baptize them with paint . . . some of the students who had come later did not want to deface the gods and tempt their wrath. They were so scared that when they were dragged to the statues they screamed and foamed at the mouth, then fell to the ground as if possessed. I was not afraid. I believed that if I was respectful to both the Chinese gods and the Christian one, neither would harm me. . . The Chinese gods understood that we were living in a Western household run by Americans. If the gods could speak, they too, would insist that the Christian deities have the better position. . . . As my brush ran over their gold-and-red faces, I said, "Pardon me, Jade Ruler, forgive me, Chief of the Eight Mortals, I am only making a disguise for you, in case the Communists or the Japanese come and recruit statues for a bonfire."
I particularly liked Tan's clear and accurate explanations of how Chinese words are built from several characters each with a different meaning, and together they form a new word - which has a specific meaning, but also includes overtones of other possible meanings. Our main character Luling is an expert calligrapher - so we get to hear plenty of interesting details about this ancient art - which I found delightful. In fact one of the very great pleasures of this book was to have so many aspects of Chinese art and culture integrated so elegantly into the narrative.
My only reservation and hence the four stars is that the pacing does become a little hectic. There were several points where I wanted the story to slow - so that I could hear more about for example - the other orphans or more about physical details of the village, or more about Hong Kong as WWII ended. The last section - and I think one other reviewer commented - was a little too neat, with perhaps one too many happy endings. I suspect there is a sort of symbolism in that all parties have grown in the course of the story; so I could understand this search for "happiness". Overall Tan achieved incredible balance with all the different elements that she wanted to relate - for example, the horrors of war; the difficult process of integrating into a foreign culture; the effect of being disconnected from your family and traditions; the trauma of disinheritance. An incredibly powerful read. -
This was the first
Amy Tan book I read. This book wasn't specifically recommended, but the author was. I was expecting something magical to happen as I turned the pages, but I couldn't get past the first four or five chapters of the book. Besides the overly long sections of actionless description (the story stagnated because of a poor balance between backstory, scene setup and description, and actual let's-move-things-along plot), the main character Ruth is so weak and whiny that I couldn't empathize, sympathize or even remotely identify with her; she made it impossible to get into the novel. It may be unfair to give The Bonesetter's Daughter a poor review without reading the whole thing, but I wonder how anyone could stay with this character for any length of time. I did like the character of LuLing, even if the stilted, stereotypical dialog coming from her seemed unecessary at best and amateurish at worst. LuLing, Ruth's aging and Alzheimer-stricken mother, is a strong character and the only thing that kept me in the novel as long as I was.
Bottom line: the protagonist was forgettable and the pace was too slow. Even January molasses memoirs get somewhere, but this book just ended up back at the library well ahead of its due date. -
Like
The Joy Luck Club, this book is about relationships between mothers and daughters, and the importance of knowing each other's life stories. In the first part of the book, we meet Ruth, a first generation Chinese-American working as a ghostwriter for New Age self-help books in California. She has a hard time asserting herself in her ten-year relationship with her boyfriend. Her mother, LuLing, has been recently diagnosed with dementia, and can no longer live alone. LuLing is depressed, critical, sends her daughter on guilt trips, and threatens to commit suicide whenever she is crossed. She believes in superstitions and curses, and needs to communicate with the dead when she makes important decisions.
The second part of the book tells the story of LuLing and the bonesetter's daughter back in China. This memoir written by LuLing, was my favorite part of the book. LuLing was part of a rural family that made high quality ink that was used in calligraphy. Both LuLing and her mother faced difficult challenges, and were never totally accepted by her father's family. In her teens, LuLing was taken in by missionaries during the Japanese occupation of China, and she later immigrated to the United States. LuLing's journal gives Ruth the knowledge to understand her mother better, and to make sense of Ruth's childhood.
The third part of the book is set in the present, and easy solutions are found for both LuLing's and Ruth's problems. A thread seems to tie the three generations of women together in strong, but difficult, mother-daughter relationships.
I had mixed feelings about this book. The first part of the book, about Ruth's problems and LuLing's negative parenting, dragged for me. The second part, set in China, was exciting with wonderful characters--the bonesetter grandfather, the wicked relatives, LuLing's first love, the suicidal nursemaid. The short third part brought things together well, but seemed to promise an almost too rosy future. -
4 - 4.5 stars.
Tan portrayed in a great way the cultural and language conflicts between migrant parents and their kids.
I also enjoyed the part of the book set in China from 1915 to 1950. -
At the beginning of Amy Tan's fourth novel, two packets of papers written in Chinese calligraphy fall into the hands of Ruth Young. One bundle is titled Things I Know Are True and the other, Things I Must Not Forget. The author? That would be the protagonist's mother, LuLing, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In these documents the elderly matriarch, born in China in 1916, has set down a record of her birth and family history, determined to keep the facts from vanishing as her mind deteriorates.
A San Francisco career woman who makes her living by ghostwriting self-help books, Ruth has little idea of her mother's past or true identity. What's more, their relationship has tended to be an angry one. Still, Ruth recognizes the onset of LuLing's decline--along with her own remorse over past rancor--and hires a translator to decipher the packets. She also resolves to "ask her mother to tell her about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. She would sit down and not be in a hurry or have anything else to do."
Framed at either end by Ruth's chapters, the central portion of The Bonesetter's Daughter takes place in China in the remote, mountainous region where anthropologists discovered Peking Man in the 1920s. Here superstition and tradition rule over a succession of tiny villages. And here LuLing grows up under the watchful eye of her hideously scarred nursemaid, Precious Auntie. As she makes clear, it's not an enviable setting: I noticed the ripe stench of a pig pasture, the pockmarked land dug up by dragon-bone dream-seekers, the holes in the walls, the mud by the wells, the dustiness of the unpaved roads. I saw how all the women we passed, young and old, had the same bland face, sleepy eyes that were mirrors of their sleepy minds. Nor is rural isolation the worst of it. LuLing's family, a clan of ink makers, believes itself cursed by its connection to a local doctor, who cooks up his potions and remedies from human bones. And indeed, a great deal of bad luck befalls the narrator and her sister GaoLing before they can finally engineer their escape from China. Along the way, familial squabbles erupt around every corner, particularly among mothers, daughters, and sisters. And as she did in her earlier The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses these conflicts to explore the intricate dynamic that exists between first-generation Americans and their immigrant elders. -
I almost gave up on this book early on. I'm glad I didn't. While I didn't really care for the character of Ruth too much or her life in San Fransisco, the story of her mother LuLing really saved the book and turned the entire novel into a deeply affecting work. The middle act where LuLing is allowed to tell her story in her own words was the obvious high point of the book for me.
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I just didn't enjoy this as much as Amy Tan's other books. Her plot development, with its mother-daughter issues, has become almost a formula. She does do a credible job describing life in China in the last century and I came away with a deeper understanding of that culture. I just never thought of Amy Tan as the Maeve Binchy of Asian writing. This is not meant to be a criticism of Maeve Binchy, an author whose well-written books I think are fun to read. It just is I get the impression that she keeps writing the same story, just changing the locations a little and adding nuances to the characters. That is how I am beginning to feel about Amy Tan.
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I think that when Amy Tan is right on she is definitely right on. A few years ago I devoured every book she had written and still have all of her books on my bookshelf. I decided to re-read "The Bonesetter's Daughter" for my Booklikes-opoly square.
The "Bonesetter's Daughter"is told as a shifting narrative of a Chines American daughter (Ruth) trying to deal with her mother (LuLing) who is starting to lose her memory due to Alzheimer's. Ruth feels frustrated trying to deal with her mother and with her relationship with her lover Art. At times Ruth becomes mute and is unable to express herself. When she finds her mother's diary she decides to have it translated and the diary allows her to really see her mother for the first time.
Ruth was a trial for me at times. Seriously. I wanted her to take a stand against her boyfriend/lover and his terrible kids. They were exhausting to even read about. But I did feel smidgens of sympathy for her here and there. Her mother's obsession with ghosts, curses, and embarrassing her as a child are definitely things that would make it hard for you to sympathize initially with LuLing until we get to her story.
I will admit that at first I didn't like LuLing until we (readers) get to read the memoirs that Ruth is having translated from what her mother wrote. You get LuLing's earlier younger voice and your heart is definitely going to break when you read about what she dealt with while living in China. It also helps Ruth better understand her mother and realize why her mother acted the way she did while she was growing up. The two women get closer towards the end of the book which did make me happy.
I have always loved Amy Tan's writing. She manages to make every sentence count and just draw you in. I felt every second of LuLing's younger voice via her diary as she remembers what her life in China was like. And also her sadness when she realizes her daughter is pulling away from her. I will say though the reason why I only gave this four stars is that the first part of the book that primarily is told from Ruth's POV was hard to get through. That's why I didn't give it 5 stars.
The setting of the book goes back and forth from San Francisco to China. The China parts of the book felt the most alive to me. Reading about LuLing living at Immortal Heart made it seem like the a stark and desolate place.
The ending was poignant but also sad. I know that this book is quite realistic with showing how Alzheimer's affects people and families, but I still wished for a different ending. -
Meaningless words are a mere group of letters. And if these words are weaved into a 350+ pages manuscript, the essential plot is misplaced between the evaporation of its characters.
Tan exaggeratedly lengthens the stereotypical dilemma of two generations of women (mother- daughter) trying to find solace in a past laden with secrets and customs that mold cultural uprightness. Disappointing outcome to what might have been an admirable chronicle. -
I waffled between three and four on this. It was a great story. Wonderful plot. It didn't really have any slow spots. I just didn't feel like I cared about the characters as much as I should. In that way it felt a little Meh.
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Amy Tan’s writing is always so beautiful. It all at once feels familiar and relatable even though I’m not Asian and even though my parents were not immigrants. She captures humanity in a way I don’t experience with many writers. I sunk right into this one, like having lunch with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while.
This book has a lot of parallels with her mother’s true life story. While listening to this book, in which the author narrates a portion of the story, I watched Unintended Memoir on Netflix, a documentary about Ms Tan, her writing career and family background. She’s an interesting person - I recommend the documentary if you are interested in learning more about her.
The Bonesetter’s Daughter has wonderfully woven detail without getting too caught up in unnecessary sub-plots. We explore the characters in ways that feel very real. People are complex, flawed and we can even feel multiple emotions about them at the same time. I recommend especially for those that enjoy complex mother-daughter stories. -
'The Bonesetter's Daughter' reminded me of
The Joy Luck Club quite a bit, but I liked 'The Joy Luck Club' better. 'The Joy Luck Club' seemed less domestic and Chick-lit than 'The Bonesetter's Daughter'. That said, 'The Bonesetter's Daughter' is an emotional domestic fiction and a deep Chick-lit dive into a relationship between a Chinese-American daughter and her Chinese mother.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one is narrated (third person) by Ruth Young about her American life. She has been in a relationship with Art for years. Ruth lives with Art and his two girls, Dory and Fia, from a previous marriage. Despite that they're not married, Art and Ruth seem like all middle-class married Americans to me, with all of the usual stresses and joys of family life. Ad nauseum. For me. For many chapters. But given the popularity of books similar in tone like this (but FAR worse), including
The Paris Wife and
The Japanese Lover, well. Bite me. Moving on.
Ruth used to work in corporate communications, but she did some freelance editing. Editing developed into a full time job 'co-writing' books written by authors who needed help fixing up their books, so she works at home, Art's house. Art works at the Center on Deafness at UCSF. He is a specialist in body language, not just sign language, which is a good thing in his relationship with Ruth. Ruth tends to being a perfectionist and a worrier. Both traits are causing Ruth a lot of stress, particularly in dealing with her mother, Chinese-born LuLing. Mandarin is LuLing's first language, but Ruth does not speak Mandarin at all, her first language and only language being English. Other people warn Ruth they think LuLing is developing some form of dementia, but Ruth ignores them, and the growing evidence of her own interactions with her mother. However, eventually, Ruth takes on more and more of her mother's problems, and once again she gets a little curious about LuLing's past. LuLing had given her a handwritten synopsis of her past in Mandarin, but Ruth had shoved it into a drawer.
Part two is about LuLing's life in China. As a child, LuLing grew up in a family of ink makers. The men ran a store in Peking, while the women made the ink in a family house in a little village out in the country. When the Japanese invade China in World War II, life becomes a struggle to survive. But even before that, LuLing's life had been upturned after her nursemaid commits suicide. Precious Auntie, the nursemaid, had secrets, one which cause her to drink hot ink years before, which deformed her mouth, lower face and tongue. Life had continued for Precious Auntie, but she was not very respected in the household.
LuLing's life takes many twists and turns, but eventually she arrived in America, marries, and had Ruth.
Part three concludes the story, bringing LuLing and Ruth closer together. Ruth realizes after reading her mother's synopsis (after she gets it translated) how mixed up her understanding of her mother's life was, and she wishes she had dug into the past of her family much sooner. Ruth had waited to the point of many elders in her family dying before she finally got curious enough to ask questions. Discovering her mother's past resolves some issues and solves a mystery.
Three-and-a-half stars. -
My edition of this book is actually the large print hardcover, which I discovered on my shelf and remembered that I was supposed to read and send it along to a friend. Since I have another book ready to send to her, I am glad I found this one before and not after a trip to the post office!
When I first started reading this story about the relationship between Ruth and her mother LuLing, I had the oddest feeling that I had read the book at sometime in the past. But as it turned out I had not, I was just recognizing Tan's favorite topic, the bittersweet interactions between mother and daughter. There always seems to be a hidden past on the mother's part, and there was here as well. but will the daughter learn all of the secrets?
What made this one more poignant was Mom LuLing developing dementia. Would she remember the facts she wanted her daughter to know? How would Ruth cope with this new stress added onto her baggage from the past and her dicey current relationships?
This was a good story, even though I could not identify too closely with Ruth, who seemed so very full of conflicts and obsessions. So full of them she seemed to miss living in her present moment. I think I wanted to like this more than I actually did. But I do think my friend will enjoy it, and I'm glad my Mom got it at the library book sale when she did. (She read the book too, and liked it very much. ) -
The Bonesetter's Daughter was a beautiful and complicated story about maternal lineage, Chinese culture and family bonds. An absolutely mesmerizing and heartwrenching tale that focuses on the lives of 3 generations of the well respected and famous bonesetter from a small Chinese village.
The author has a gift for creating a story rich in history and emotion. The plot spans from early 20th century to present day. It takes place in Peking, Hong Kong and North America.
This is a slower moving tale that takes its time. We get to know and understand Ruth, her mother and Precious Auntie very well. By the end, old secrets are revealed and life lessons are learned. A beautiful end to a beautiful story. -
La historia de tres mujeres de la misma familia contada por ellas. Amy Tan nos lleva desde una China, plagada de supersticiones y con tintes sobrenaturales en la que conviven realidad y espíritus, hasta terminar en el mundo actual. Pero, sobre todo es la historia de una madre y de su hija, y del descubrimiento de esta última de la verdadera madre que se esconde tras esa fachada. El conflicto entre ellas y la paz final.
Se pueden ver como dos partes muy marcadas que son la historia de la hija y el resto de la novela. Parece más real, más personal, como si Amy Tan nos estuviese contando sus propias experiencias. Experiencias que podemos reconocer como propias e identificarnos con muchas de las situaciones planteadas. Con muchos de los sentimientos de esa hija ante una madre fuerte y algo distante. En esos momentos, la autora parece dejarse llevar por sus propios sentimientos y eso se nota. Consigue llegarnos profundamente. El relato se enriquece y gana profundidad. Algo que no puede conseguir con el resto de la historia que cuenta con una especie de distanciamiento, no sé si por la propia personalidad del personaje narrador o por no ser totalmente coincidente con la propia autora del libro.
Tal vez peca de excesivamente largo en algunos momentos, pero es plenamente recomendable su lectura. Una novela que, a través del relato de las vidas de esas mujeres, se descubre un trasfondo lleno de fuertes sentimientos que van aflorando en determinados momentos. Una historia de relaciones materno filiales más que la narración de unos hechos. -
Lovely.
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(review in English below)
3,5*
Há muito tempo que não lia nenhum livro de Amy Tan e acho que estou a ficar cada vez mais exigente com a escrita à medida que os anos - e os livros - vão passando.
Neste caso, acho que a tradução não terá ajudado muito, sobretudo nas partes mais "líricas". Quando ler Os Cem Sentidos Secretos, que tenho no original em inglês, hei-de tirar as dúvidas.
A história é interessante, especialmente a segunda parte, em que a mãe de Ruth conta a sua história, desde a infância numa aldeia chinesa até à ida para os Estados Unidos, já adulta.
Apesar de uma primeira parte um pouco enervante, devido às dificuldades de relacionamento entre Ruth e a mãe, este livro acabou por ser uma leitura agradável e cativante.
Recomendo sobretudo a quem se interesse pela cultura chinesa e pelas relações familiares, principalmente entre mães e filhas.
3.5 stars
It's been a long time since I've read a book by Amy Tan and I think i'm getting more and more picky with the writing as the years - and the books - pass by.
In this case, maybe the translation wasn't very helpful, especially in the more "lyrical" parts. When I get to read The Hundred Secret Senses in the original English I'll know if this is true.
The story is interesting, in particular the second part, in which Ruth's mother tells her story, from her childhood in a Chinese small village until her journey to the United States, already an adult woman.
In spite of an unnerving first part, because of the difficult relationship between Ruth and her mother, this book turned out to be a pleasant and captivating reading.
I recommend it especially to those interested in the Chinese culture and in family relationships, mostly between mothers and daughters. -
"The Bonesetter's Daughter" is the second to last Amy Tan novel I have yet to re-read, and like "Hundred Secret Senses," I realized I couldn't remember a dang thing about this book. "The Joy Luck Club" is all about switching POVs between eight characters, "The Kitchen God's Wife" is basically a super long version of one Joy Luck story (that is of course morbidly depressing half the time), and "Saving Fish From Drowning" is about a ghost following around and narrating about the lulziest tour group to ever hit Myanmar. Turns out that "Hundred Secret Senses" was about an insufferable woman with a badass sister who had an awesome backstory to tell - turns out that "The Bonesetter's Daughter" is about an insufferable woman with a badass mother who had an awesome backstory to tell.
The first thing making Bonesetter Stick out is the fact the daughter's - Ruth - POV is written in third person. Why, when Amy Tan is the queen of rambling first POV? I have no idea. Because the entire middle section narrated by her mother, LuLing, is written in first. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Other than that, it's the usual Amy Tan fare. Ruth is in a miserable relationship on the brink of failure (wow, that's new) and her mother, the immigrant LuLing, drives her bonkers. (That's new too!!) Ruth spends her whole time whining and whining, especially about her mother, and ESPECIALLY about her long-time boyfriend what'shisface. (Oh right, Art. Groan.) Art has two teenaged girls from a previous marriage with the most wtf names ever (Dory and Fia. Yeah. That's real 90s.) who talk like they're six instead of early teens. Basically, Ruth's life is totally moan-worthy and omg all these negative feels. She and Olivia from Hundred Secret Senses should become bffs and complain about how awful it is to be upper middle class in San Francisco.
ANYWAY, the story. You see, Ruth has a mother (really?? In an Amy Tan novel??) named LuLing, who is starting to act a little strange. Turns out she has early-onset dementia, and is of course only going to get worse. So what does LuLing do? Write down her entire life story up until moving to America, just in case she forgets any of the details and can never tell her daughter.
Ruth has the documents translated while her mother is away. Of course, what she discovers about her mother are things she would have never guessed before. Or even imagined. As usual, LuLing's story about growing up the illegitimate daughter of deformed-by-fire "Bonesetter's Daughter" is both heart wrenching (I mean it's 1920s China come on) and intriguing. I struggled to get through Ruth's set-up chapters and then pretty much devoured all of LuLing's backstory in one night. Since I'd forgotten most of it, it was like it was brand new to me...which is always nice.
With all this whining on my part (hi Ruth, you're rubbing off on me) you may be wondering why I gave this book four stars. It's more like 3 and a half, but I decided to round up, because of the score I gave Hundred Secret Senses. These books are almost exactly the same in structure and style, just the details are different. And the biggest difference is that Bonesetter had a waaaay more fulfilling ending than Hundred Secret Senses did. I was actually smiling a little when I closed this book. Unlike the other one which I'm pretty sure I threw across the room.
Is it Tan's best work? No. Not at all. I have the "reader's guide" paperback and in it is a lot of mentions on Tan's part about how hard this book was for her to write. Well, yeah. You're pretty much just copying yourself now. (She said affectionately.) That said, Tan is an amazing writer, so her "slush" tends to be far better grade than most other author's magnum opii. I read this book very quickly, not because I'm a speed reader but because I was legit hooked once LuLing's tale began. If you love the backstory's of Tan's "mothers", then read this book now. You won't be disappointed. If you can't bear to read another Olivia-type character again I'm...I'm sorry. Good luck. -
Wonderfully moving story of mothers and daughters and how the way we learn to relate with our mothers can impact every other relationship we form in life. The characters grow and learn and change over the course of the story in a most satisfying way, although the author does come perilously close to an unrealistically Alright, maybe she did it, but I enjoyed the journey so much that I didn’t mind it. I zoomed through this book in less than two days because I stayed up waaaaaay too late last night to finish it.
Hardcover version, has been on my bookshelf for so long I don’t even remember when or where I got it. Really 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 because I don’t do half-stars.
I read this for The 16 Tasks of the Festive Season, for Square 11, December 21st-22nd: Book themes for Dōngzhì Festival: Read a book set in China or written by a Chinese author / an author of Chinese origin; or read a book that has a pink or white cover. This book is both set partly in China and the author is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the US. -
am citit-o candva, acum cativa ani buni, dar mare lucru nu-mi mai aminteam....a fost o experienta cel putin placuta, o gura de aer proaspat si o iesire din cotidian care mi-a confirmat ideea ca muzica si cartile sunt motive suficiente pentru a te bucura de viatã ....
-
A first-generation immigrant is a special type of being. Her past is tied up to her country of origin - its myths, culture, legends and history - while her future is to be moulded into the alien land where she finds herself. And in the case of America, a land without a past (or a past which has been obliterated by the early white settlers), the past of the immigrant never fully goes away, because in this land bereft of myth where only the future matters, it is the only thing she has to hold on to.
For the second-generation immigrant in the USA, this past of a country she has seen only through the eyes of her imagination is like a millstone round her neck. She has to somehow "belong" to her ethnicity - yet be part of the vibrant, young culture without sticking out like a sore thumb. So this naturally leads to friction with her parents, as the old world tries to keep its tenuous hold on her.
And this is especially valid in the case of immigrants from the East, because myth lies heavily on the Eastern psyche. In this tale of a mother and daughter from China, it is this past - a tragic, horrific, yet poignant one - stretching its tentacles into the present-day America that forms the core of the story.
Ruth Young is a ghostwriter, living with her Jewish boyfriend Art and his daughters. She has a troubled relationship with her mother LuLing, who is one of two sisters who relocated to the USA from China immediately after the war. LuLing is a typical control-freak Eastern mum, in addition to being a permanent victim in her own personal narrative: she believes that she gets the short end of the stick always. She and her sister GaoLing married brothers, but LuLing's husband died in an accident, leaving her relatively impoverished, while the husband of her sister got ahead in the world. From this tragedy onwards, LuLing is living in an extremely unstable world where sanity and security is hanging by a thread; and growing up in this world affects Ruth also, and she lives within an impenetrable psychological wall created by herself.
Every August twelfth, Ruth is struck by a strange malady wherein she loses her voice for a week; it started when she moved in with her boyfriend. As the novel begins, it is the ninth anniversary of this peculiar disease. But something is different this year - she finds a manuscript written (in Chinese) by her mother: the story of her past. With LuLing feared to be slowly slipping into dementia, Ruth must decipher this to unravel her past before she loses her present and future.
And it is this tale of a young orphan in a Chinese village, the daughter of a traditional "bone doctor" who cures orthopaedic complaints through medicines brewed out of "dragon bones", that proves to be the salvation of LuLing - and Ruth. Spanning through the twilight years of the Kuomintang era, the Japanese invasion, and the Second World War, the tragic history opens a window to Ruth - a picture window through she witnesses her origin and roots, right down to the Peking Man. As we take leave, we see a changed protagonist who does not lose her voice, but rather chooses silence.
***
As with
The Kitchen God's Wife, this is a tale of generations: mother to daughter to daughter. The characterisation is brilliant (especially LuLing) and the second part, LuLing's recollection of her Chinese past, is engagingly written. The book is highly readable too.
But is it great literature? I would say no. Having read Amy Tan's other novel mentioned in the paragraph above, I found this to be thematically the same. I feel that any future novel by her which I may read, if it centres on these same themes, I may find difficult to finish. -
A great read! The mother-daughter relationships spanning over three generations was done so authentically it is hard to believe that Amy Tan was not there herself in each generation living those lives in all the different scenes/eras of the book.
"Things I must not forget" - is the first line of some Chinese writings which her mother handed to her and which she managed to translate.
Her mother, Luling, was in the early stages of Alzheimers, which forced Ruth (or Lootie as her mother pronounced her name), to finally get someone to translate the rest of the papers. Ruth had a need to understand her mother's behaviour and thoughts better.
The book often had too many 'page-filler' detail in. You know, those paragraphs and paragraphs of words, which the reader has to skip here and there to continue the story, but it was written so beautifully, and so detailed, with so much suspense, that I just couldn't put it down.
After discovering her mother and grandmother's remarkable life stories hidden in the old Laz-y-Boy chair, Ruth could finally understand herself better, although it was unintended. But she first had to relive two other lives through her mother's meticulous writings to reach a point where she connect all the dots in her own personal relationship-issues with the people around her.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Excellent read. Amy Tan is not one of those authors who can be put down easily. And to really enjoy her writing style the most, one must make time to sit back and start one of her stories and stay with it right through to the end. It is worth it. -
2007 Rating: 2 Stars
2016 Rating: I’m very happy this one got selected for book club as it had been many years since I’d read this. I remember my original frustration was that I was much more used to Amy Tan’s work which is primarily set in the past. This book starts in the present day and remains centered there, even as the past is explored. Sadly, this present-focus remains less engaging for me than other works by Tan. I don’t need to love or even like the protagonist, but I also don’t want to be annoyed, bored or just uncomfortable spending time with them. Sadly, that’s still how I feel about Ruth. Her present world is bleak and joyless and reading it felt sort of joyless for me. I enjoyed the flashback to her mother’s story the best but even then…there was a deep thread of sadness here that seemed intense even in context against a long tradition of sort of depressing Chinese stories and Tan’s own work. Overall, this book has a lot of interesting elements and details, is well-written and paced, but ultimately just doesn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience for me.
