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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. --Victoria Jenkins --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's been said, but...,
By
This review is from: The Bonesetter's Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm probably repeating the same thing everyone else has already said but...I've read all of Tan's books and while they're quick, easy reads they've begun to sound disturbingly the same. It's always a mother-daughter issue cloaked with "ancient Chinese secrets" and dysfunctional cross cultural communications. The Bonesetter's Daughter has some original ideas that could have been developed in many different ways. The main character is a ghost writer and Tan uses this to tie in Chinese mysticism in what could have been a very clever storyline. But instead, it's merely a very interesting idea hidden beneath a worn out framework. I'd like to see Tan attempt something new.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another good one...,
By
This review is from: The Bonesetter's Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)
Amy Tan is always able to weave and interesting story that encapsulates both past and present day. The mother and daughter stories are something most women can probably relate to on some level. An interesting read and once I got past the first little bit, the story flowed very well. It gives the reader such an insight into historic China.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely interesting and well written!,
By
This review is from: The Bonesetter's Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)
Ruth, a ghostwriter for women's self help books, lives with her boyfriend Art and his two daughters in San Francisco. She becomes increasingly concerned about her mother's dementia. Ruth finds it hard to tell what is real and not real in her mother's mind until she comes across a diary recording her mother's past. Ruth discovers that her mother LuLing is from the town of Immortal Heart in China. There her family was well known, not only for their ink business, but for her father's being a famous "Bonesetter" who treated his patients with "modern, try-anything, and traditional" medicine. Crucial to his practice of traditional medicine were dragon bones gathered by LuLing's family from the Monkey's Jaw, a secret place in a cave in the deepest ravines of a dry riverbed. LuLing's most beloved nursemaid, Precious Auntie, taught her the secret of unearthing these dragon bones.This beautiful story, like other Amy Tan novels, dwells on women's relationships. As the novel opens, we explore Ruth's feelings of frutration as a daughter trying to deal with an independent, yet increasingly demented mother. We also see her trying to be a mother to her boyfriend's two young daughters. As we read the diary of LuLing, we see how hidden family secrets twist women's relationships into never-anticipated situations. This work is so beautiful because it deals with real emotions, different for each individual, in two different cultures, settings, and times. It helps the reader imagine what it would be like to be in any of those sitations by showing one family's experiences within that realm of existence.
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