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Liked It5 of 5 members found this review helpful “This story of a Chinese American mother-daughter relationship is written with immense depth and authenticity. What deeply resonated with me, was the duality with which we daughters often grow up viewing our mothers. On the one hand, we see our first example of womanhood and we can't help but...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “The relationship drama of the daughter was tedious, but I thought the mother's story was well laid out and in places very vibrant.” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“The relationship drama of the daughter was tedious, but I thought the mother's story was well laid out and in places very vibrant.”
kala_way wrote this review 2 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This book mainly cover the topic of mother and daughter relationships and the conflicts they face together. In the book Ruth is having trouble connecting to her Chinese heritage and is also having difficulties relating to her mother. Ruth finds her mother's journals from when she was a child and Ruth discovers the hardships her mother went through as a child and this explains why her mother acts the way she does. Ruth thinks her mother is stubborn and difficult and is often worried about her mother's memory loss. After reading the the journals Ruth comes to an understanding about her mother and mends the relationship. ”
Danielle T wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“I thought that this book was fairly boring. I didn't find it to ave a great plot line or overall story. It was simply a mediocre book. In this a young Chinese-American woman is forced to deal with her Chinese mother. Throughout the book the mother seems to become more and more "confused" and starts to seem more and more crazy. Her stories begin to not make any sense and this is magnified when he truly IS confused as to what she is saying such as when she claimed to the doctor that she witnessed O.J. Simpson murder his wife. However it turns out that many of the mothers stories were not just random gibberish but true stories from her past such as her and he sister having different parents. Ruth finds all this out when sh finally reads her mothers memoirs after years of having them. After they find all this out Ruth makes it a point to investigate things like the name of her grandmother, what it means, why this is important etc. This would be a good book ”
Lawrence R wrote this review Thursday, November 5 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This is one of the most memorable books I have read.”
Michele C wrote this review Tuesday, November 3 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Don't really remember it... ”
Kellie K wrote this review Monday, November 2 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“The Bonesetter's Daughter is told in three parts: present day San Francisco; a small village in China pre-1940; and then back to present day U.S.A.
Lindy Pratch wrote this review Thursday, October 29 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Ruth's mother, LuLing, was born in China and raised by a horribly disfigured nursemaid called Precious Auntie. There is a mystery surrounding the identity of LuLing's mother. LuLing's husband died young, so it was just Ruth and her mother in her family as she grew up. As an adult, Ruth has great difficulty negotiating intimate relationships. She has lived with a divorced man and his two teenaged daughters for 10 years, but still doesn't feel like she belongs there. Meanwhile, she worries about her mother, who is developing Alzheimer's. LuLing and Ruth are both complex, interesting women.
The first two parts were excellent but the final part seemed rushed and everything gets resolved into an unrealistically happy ending. Still, I would recommend this to women who enjoy reading about mother-daughter relationships. That is definitely Amy Tan's greatest strength.”
“I started reading this book and then stopped. By now I've read Amy Tan's other 3 books and all 3 books in Pearl S. Buck's trilogy. At this point I'm just over saturated with the theme of Chinese guilt and how ungrateful, disrespectful or disobedient Chinese kids are to their parents/elders.
Catahoula Kelpie wrote this review Friday, October 23 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
After a year I decided to give this book another try and I ended up liking it.
Still not as good as Amy Tan's first 2 books. I hope if she writes another book that she changes the theme.”
“I really enjoy Tan's writing style. Her incorporation of past and present into the story is seamless, and the ending is wonderful.”
Irene R wrote this review Tuesday, October 13 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I like Amy Tan, but I love this novel. The generational and ethnic elements appeal to me.”
Bil wrote this review Friday, October 2 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“In The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan, Amy’s mother has Dementia. So she writes down her entire life story from China to America and wants her daughter to read it. The one problem is, it is written in old Chinese characters and her mother gave it to her 5 years ago. I think that this story relates to my mother and her relationship with her mother.The stress of their communication differences and other children of Ruth cause a very tense, one-way relationship. This book talks about all types of mother daughter relationships from all different generations and cultures. Not to get into to much family stories, but my mom and her mom have different views on basically everything. This book is a little bit slow, but the ideas behind it and Ruth's mother's hard life story keeps you reading, and the relationship between Ruth and Art is really interesting how it seems so real. I felt like I can "connect" to her just because their jammed relationship seems so everyday, but interesting to get into detail. It also adds a twist with Art's daughters reaction and relationship with Ruth. Although this book is about her pages that she wrote, the main theme is relationships between mother and daughter. My mother and I get along extremely well, her mother and her aren’t as lucky. The stress of their communication differences and other children of Ruth cause a very tense, one-way relationship. ”
Kat H wrote this review Tuesday, October 27 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
