Talk Back

[Sirius]

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan - no more spoilers than might be expected from reading any other Amy Tan book...

The first thing I need to say is that I haven't read all of Amy Tan's work, just this and The Joy Luck Club. The next thing that I need to say is that I think Amy Tan is quite a wonderful writer. She knows how to spin a good yarn, She is positively awash with good character development, and you really care about these people...you feel satisfied at the end of a book, not because she's tied everything up in a little bow, but because you feel that you've heard the story. You also get the feeling that life goes on for these people, you've just seen a segment of their lives, but they live on, even as we walk away from them.

My only complaint, if it can even be thought of as such, is that I feel like she keeps writing different versions of the same story...which is this:
A girl grows up in China in a set of circumstances, comes to America, has a daughter who, having grown up American has many and varied issues with her mother, who because of their differing world view has many and varied issues with her daughter. Back story Back story, back and forth in time, resolution, of sorts....or even just a getting on with it.

The details are all different, of course. The back story - all different, the professions of the people both in China and America - all different. And there are plot twistings and turnings, secrets and intrigue. And I really, really liked it. I made time for it...didn't just grab spare minutes for it.

I read the amazingly stunning "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri about a year ago. I kept thinking about it as I read The Bonesetter's Daughter. For those of you who haven't read "Maladies" it is a collection of short stories about the experience of being Indian in a hugely wide variety of circumstances...a young married couple having been raised outside of India come to visit it for the first time...an Indian apartment building's tenants relationship with the woman who does maintenance...a young woman having her first affair...It is about all different versions the experience of being Indian in India and being raised outside of India, when you look identifiable as "other" - all of these things kept surfacing as I read Amy Tan... And although Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer for her collection, and in so much as it is easier to give a bunch of different viewpoints in a short story collection...I still and all wanted to feel like after this much time, and with as many books as I've missed, that Amy Tan might have something else to write about than the mother/daughter immigrant/1st generation thing by now. Perhaps someone who's in the know can tell me if she's just getting back to this and I just missed all those other great themes of hers.

All in all, I do recommend this book. It was compelling, and my disapointment, I think, shouldn't really reflect on whether this is worth a read. It defiantly is.

[MLE292]

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I highly recommend Amy Tan's book of essays The Opposite of Fate. She talks about how she came to write the books that she has.

Her mother was the basis for one of the characters in The Joy Luck Club and when she saw the movie, said something like "It wasn't too sad, because the real life version was much more grievous." Her mother later offered more specific details for The Kitchen God's Wife

The Bonesetters Daughter was written around the time Amy Tan's mother had Alzheimer's. I would have liked better resolution to the main character's issues as an editor, but I see your point that her characters aren't always about finding an ending to the story.