Amy Tan - The Bonesetter's Daughter

Pros: Amy Tan has been good before...now, she's even better!
Cons: [This space intentionally left blank]

Amy Tan has always written novels which stop short just this side of autobiography. Books like The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife have documented Chinese-American family life with such detail, such sincerity that it feels like...

Pros: Amy Tan. Need I say more?
Cons: A bit of a slow start.

Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter is a touching, powerful novel. However, it does not have the impact of Tan’s most famous novel The Joy Luck Club. I am not sure Tan will ever be able to recreate the magic of her first novel, but she is...

Pros: beautiful details, great mother/daughter relationship story, as usual
Cons: very familiar territory for Tan fans

I've been waiting a while to read Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter, and I wasn't disappointed. Having read her previous books, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses, I'm fairly familiar...

Pros: any mother or daughter can relate
Cons: it's definitely a "chick" book

A long-time fan of Amy Tan's writing, I was recently going through some of my books to determine which could be released in my BookCrossing.com releases when I can upon The Bonesetter's Daughter. I immediately sat down to reread it in order ...

Pros: Exquisite prose of the first order
Cons: none. abolutely none. Less than none.

Amy Tan is a great writer. What makes a writer great, you ask? Several things, she has talent with words, wonderful stories to relay, and she doesn't buy into publisher pressure to mass produce herself into mediocrity. Nothing makes me more anguished...

Pros: Mellifluous writing in traditional Amy Tan style, compelling in its semi-autobiographical simplicity
Cons: Tan turns out another practically flawless novel

These are the things I know are true...

Amy Tan has had my undivided attention since I first picked up a copy of The Joy Luck Club years ago. She does not capture her readers' hearts and minds with building suspense,...

Pros: Amy Tan nails mother and daughter relationships on the head!
Cons: She apologizes for this not being her best work. Amy, never apologize again!

Amy Tan continues to mesmerize me with her tales. Few mother and daughter relationships are all tea parties and Easy Bake Ovens. They are hard work requiring excavation of the heart and soul. Especially fraught with intensity are those where mothers want...

Pros: Interesting writing; A new novel a la Amy Tan or Joy Luck
Cons: None

How would you feel if you had to wait until your mother's death to unearth her true name? Amy Tan and her siblings found themselves in this predicament when they were filling her death certificate. They did not know which name to put down. This is one...

Pros: beautiful novel about maternal love and Chinese history
Cons: none

This was my first Amy Tan novel. I never read The Joy Luck Club, but when my book club chose The Bonesetter's Daughter as our April novel, I was eager to see what all of the hype was about.

Things I Know Are True
The novel is the...

Pros: A cultural look at the Asian-American experience.
Cons: Superficial and extremely superfluous, a mixture of excellent and mediocre writing skill.

While this opening line of the preface is engaging, the promise of such entrapment is never fulfilled. Disappointingly, as the story of ‘The Bonesetter’s daughter’ unfolds, the novel continues to lose the aspect of it’s initial charm and quiet...

Pros: A touching, haunting story with fascinating characters.
Cons: Familiar ground (can be a good or bad thing).

Though generations may come and go and even our bones may eventually turn to dust, words can last forever. This is the message that Amy Tan delivers straight to heart with her fourth novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. The premise of the ...

Pros: Well-written, very interesting story of a complex mother-daughter relationship
Cons: None

Last week, Amy Tan was scheduled to conduct a book signing of The Bonesetter's Daughter at Border's here in St. Louis. Unfortunately, she was a "no-show" due to the East Coast snowstorm. I thought I would wait to buy the book until they could...

Pros: spellbindingly written, wonderful use of descriptions
Cons: none

Using words to describe into detail, enabling the reader to feel as if the action is happening before their eyes, Amy Tan has created another masterpiece to be enjoyed by all. Entitled "The Bonesetter’s Daughter," Tan’s novel has mesmerized me into the...

Pros: beautifully written historical novel
Cons: a little slow

This summer is of the woman. Yayas are about mothers mistreating daughters. I read Bonesetter's Daughter for the Chinese aspect of things, and it was actually similar.

For one thing, history is revealed. Ruth, the American daughter of a...

Pros: Excellent mother-daughter tension, conflict and love.
Cons: None

Amy Tan has done it again with The Bonesetter's Daughter. Not only do we have intriguing story of China in the days before and after the revolution, but we also have an age-old story of the tension between mothers and daughters that is so difficult to...