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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 th...

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

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

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...

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 h...

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 empa...

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.

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, criti...

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 min...

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.

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 wit...

'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 ha...

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 wa...

"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 grou...

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 (view spoiler)[Happily Ever After ending. (hide spoiler)] 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 tha...