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MerrilyMe

When I'm not being Merry Raymond of Patch of Puddles, I'm writing as MerrilyMe. Unless I'm selling toys. Or parenting.

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amy tan

Book #13 The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan

March 22, 2011 by Merry Leave a Comment

Amy Tan has made it so quickly into my ‘favourite authors’ list that I’m reading her books regardless of whether that stops me from getting 60 new authors under my belt this year. I don’t want to wait till next year to read what else she has to offer, I want to read them now.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter is… exquisite. The words to describe it are trite really but none the less true for it. It is moving, thought provoking, maybe life changing. As a story and as prose, it is captivating and as a description of a mother-daughter relationship that is difficult, it struck a lot of chords with me, not all of them comfortable ones.

In brief, it tells the story of Ruth, a first generation Chinese American at a pivotal point in her life. She’s not quite happy, not quite fulfilled and uncomfortably aware she is not fulfilling everything she wishes she were, while all too aware of the edges of her comfort zone. And it also tells the story of her mother, a woman slipping quickly into dementia with a history and a past from the days of 1930-1950’s China which needs to be told so her daughter understand who she is and where she came from.

The story slips between the two time periods effortlessly and the characters really do grow and alter before your eyes. So little happens, yet everything changes, in the way that is so often true of life for all of us. It is not always the wrenchingly big things that alter everything. All the characters, all their foibles and flaws, are recognisable from the teen step daughters to the mothers (many of them) who little the story.

I think it would be impossible to do justice to the book; read it, learn a little more about life in a time British school history lessons ignore, stand beside some women who watched everything change. You will not, I think, be disappointed, not least because, without tying the ends up in a pretty bow, there is a sense of something having been accomplished through communication at the end of it. All the people, imperfect as they are, make some effort and there is some reward for that.

It’s a pleasing thought.

BLM index – not bad. It has a bit of this and that in it, as life does, but nothing so terrible as to pull your heart out.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: amy tan, Book Review, chinese american history, chinese history, chinese lifestyle, the bonesetter's daughter

Book #5 Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

January 31, 2011 by Merry 3 Comments

I picked this up in my library as part of a random assault on the shelves to find people I hadn’t read before. (So far, a rule of thumb seems to be ‘shelves fine, ignore stand on the way in, ignore all free standing round things, round things at end of shelves good, shelf on way out also good. On no account get anything where there are more than 6 things by the same author in one place. This may be another prejudice but I’m still in library rehab, so let me be).

I was quite pleased that coming home all 4 of the authors had 4 or 5 stars on Amazon and at least a couple available on Kindle and at the library, should I like them. However, given I only really want to read on my Kindle now and old fashioned books feel a bit last year (and I can’t knit while I read them!) this book took a little longer than it ought to have done. Amy Tan was further improved in the  worth reading standing stakes though, when I found a couple of her books on Helen’s shelves.

The length of time it took me to read Saving Fish From Drowning in no way reflects on how much I enjoyed it. It is another book though where I struggle to think exactly why. The story, narrated by a recently deceased friend and leader of the group, tells the story of a rather naive group of people who take a ‘cultural’ trip to China and Burma and their experiences as the trip teeters precariously around the edges of going very wrong. Perhaps that is a good sentence to sum up the book in fact; it teeters around the edges of exploring the characters, including the life of the narrator, dips its toe into the politics of the regimes in Burma and China, paddles along the edges of rebel causes and the unreality that perhaps builds up in the minds of the desperate and sprinkles flavoursome herbs of understanding about those countries too.

That’s not a bad thing. I’m not desperate to be preached at about the miseries of life elsewhere when I’m ready for bed and this book created an inclination to know more, while a more heavy handed approach might have made me shut the book and shut my mind because I don’t want to know about more awful things. There were some eloquent blendings of beliefs, some clever characters and all the people in the group and the wider world of the book felt real and knowable. I’ll definitely read more Amy Tan; I don’t know if I’d read this one again but I’d certainly add it to my list of ‘things I’m better for having read’.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: amy tan, book reviews, fiction, Kindle, reading, saving fish from drowning

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