Book
The bonesetter's daughter / Amy Tan.
Record details
- ISBN: 0399146857 (limited ed.)
- ISBN: 9780399146855 (limited ed.)
- ISBN: 9780399146435 (acid-free paper)
- ISBN: 0399146431 (acid-free paper)
- ISBN: 0345455711 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: 10 copies + 1 research guide ; cm.
- Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's, c2001.
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Available copies
- 15 of 15 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Elkford Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 15 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elkford Public Library | FC TAN (Text) | 35170000311803 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 December 2000
The same fascination with mother-daughter relationships that made Tan's debut novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), so captivating drives her newest, an even more polished and provocative work. Compulsively readable and beautifully structured around three richly metaphorical themes--bones, ghosts, and ink--this novel tells the stories of three generations of women, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century in a small Chinese village, where the bonesetter, a skilled healer, defies tradition and teaches his daughter everything he knows. Intelligent and willful, she vehemently rejects the marriage proposal of the vulgar coffinmaker, who curses her, thus setting in motion a tragic sequence of events that continues to unfold a century later in San Francisco, where a Chinese American woman finally reads the memoir her mother wrote for her. Although Ruth's a ghostwriter for New Agey self-help books, the advice she formulates hasn't helped her achieve genuine intimacy with her live-in boyfriend or cope with her argumentative mother, who has long been haunted by the ghost of a woman she calls Precious Auntie. Widowed since Ruth was a toddler, China-born and -raised calligraphy artist Luling still speaks stilted English in spite of decades of California life, and now she appears to be afflicted with Alzheimer's. As Ruth moves back home to care for Luling, she is assailed by memories of her own difficult childhood, then discovers that Precious Auntie, the bonesetter's daughter, is actually her grandmother. As Tan tells the spellbinding stories of these three strong, self-sacrificing women in this lucent novel of deep feelings and gentle humor, she weaves in stripes of vivid Chinese history, including the discovery of Peking Man, ponders what's bred in the bone, and celebrates the preservation of family history as an act of love and a conduit for forgiveness. Donna Seaman Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - BookPage Reviews : BookPage Reviews 2001 March
Amy Tan's new book is full of mystery, suspense, superstition and magic. It is a novel as layered as the bone-filled caves outside Peking, and the clues are as shrouded in dust and history as any ancient archaeological dig.Ruth Liu is a writer sandwiched between the man she lives with, his daughters and her aging mother. She is also in a race to discover the true story of her mother, LuLing Liu Young, before Alzheimer's disease masks her mother's memories completely. She lives with her boyfriend and his two daughters, ghostwrites self-help books, and manages all the details of her mother's life. She is so busy she almost misses the signs of dementia her mother displays: paranoia, forgetfulness, confusion, anger and depression.
But it is easy to see why Ruth might miss these signs. Her mother has been a paranoid, superstitious, angry woman all her life, convinced that she is living under a curse caused by the suicide and lack of burial of her beloved mute and disfigured nursemaid, Precious Auntie. This character is at the heart of Tan's novel. Who is Precious Auntie? What is her true story?
Ruth believes the answers are in a document, written in perfect Chinese calligraphy by LuLing, that Ruth finds in her mother's house. She does not have the skill or time to translate each of the painstaking characters and hires someone else to sift through the document, much as she is hired to work on other authors' words. The gentleman she hires presents Ruth with the story, told in the words of LuLing and Precious Auntie. The many accounts overlap, contradict and challenge each other, and it is the reader, through Ruth, who has the job of excavating the truth.
Precious Auntie is the daughter of a bonesetter, an important medical profession in her part of China. Part orthopedist and part herb doctor, the bonesetter treats patients with the ground-up bones found in the caves around the village of Immortal Heart. These bones are eventually identified by scientists as "Peking Man," the remains of early humans who lived half a million years ago. Peking Man turns out to be a composite of many bones from many humans, just as the story Ruth so desperately wants to understand is a composite of all the stories told to Ruth through family lore and the written tale from LuLing.
There are many parts to this mystery: Who is LuLing's real mother? What is her name? Why was Precious Aunt's face so horribly disfigured? What stories are lies, told to protect someone else? What happened to Peking Man? Superstitions, curses, oracles, ghosts and spirits - all are part of the world Tan spins for us, a world that eventually brings us back to the future and to the superstitions that guide all of us, whether we live in the year 2001 or 801.
The Bonesetter's Daughter is a stirring reminder of the power of love, secrets and family stories. Family histories, even when they have been reinvented and rearranged, have the power to explain, inform and allow forgiveness. As we age and face our own mortality, we might remember the wise words of Precious Auntie, "After all . . . what is the past but what we choose to remember."
Robin Smith is a teacher in Nashville. Copyright 2001 BookPage Reviews
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2000 December #2
Tan's fourth novel (and first in six years) wisely returns to the theme of mothers and daughters simultaneously estranged and bonded, a subject she treated so memorably in The Joy Luck Club (19xx) and The Kitchen God's Wife (19xx).Appropriately enough, there are two subtly interconnected stories here. The first is that of Chinese-American "ghost writer" (specializing in "inspirational and self-improvement books") Ruth Young, a workaholic in her mid-40s who's living with a divorced Wasp and his two adolescent daughters while dealing as best she can with her frail, elderly mother LuLing, whose imperfect assimilation into American culture is becoming exacerbated by encroaching Alzheimer's. The story within it is LuLing's written memoir of her childhood in avillage near Peking; orphanhood, marriage, and bereavement under Japanese invasion during WWII before she finally reinvented herself and emigrated to San Francisco; and especially her complex relationship with her "Precious Auntie," a victim of patriarchal oppression whose hold on LuLing's mind and heart long outlasts her death, and who proves to have been much more than the "nursemaid" who raised her. LuLing's frustrated efforts to learn the (occluded) truth about her origins is ingeniously linked to the archaeological searches that result in the discovery of "Peking Man"âa discovery later echoed by both Ruth's and LuLing's confrontations with confused and lost identities. The novel builds slowly, and a few sequences (including an overextended account of a visit to an assisted-living facility) seem inexplicably disproportionate. But the elaborate preparation pays generous dividends in the stunning final 50 or so pages: a beautifully modulated amalgam of grief, pride, resentment, and resignationâas Ruth accepts the consequences of knowing "She was her mother's child and mother to the child her mother had become."Tan strikes gold once again. Copyright 2000 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2001 February #1
Best-selling author Tan will not disappoint her readers with her most recent work. As with The Joy Luck Club (1989), Tan's narration represents the perspectives of both the Chinese-born mother and the American-born daughter. Ruth, a successful freelance ghostwriter, has lived for nine years with her partner and his two daughters. She is the only child of LuLing, who was widowed shortly after Ruth was born. Now in her mid-forties, Ruth begins to examine her feelings toward her mother, her relationship with her partner, and her career. In the midst of her emotional confusion, she rediscovers her mother's handwritten story of her life in China. After arranging for a translation, Ruth learns some long-hidden truths about her family, which help her to appreciate her mother better. Tan explores the conflicts faced by many women who seek independence while caring for partners, children, and family. She writes with compassion about the tension between immigrant parents and American-born children caused by differences in language and cultural upbringing. This is another fine novel by an important American author. Recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/00.] Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2000 June #1
The publisher having just received the manuscript at press time, there's not much to be said about Tan's new novel, except that it is being billed as a major publishing event. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2000 December #1
In its rich character portrayals and sensitivity to the nuances of mother-daughter relationships, Tan's new novel is the real successor to, and equal of, The Joy Luck Club. This luminous and gripping book demonstrates enhanced tenderness and wisdom, however; it carries the texture of real life and reflects the paradoxes historical events can produce. Ruth Young is a 40-ish ghostwriter in San Francisco who periodically goes mute, a metaphorical indication of her inability to express her true feelings to the man she lives with, Art Kamen, a divorced father of two teenage daughters. Ruth's inability to talk is subtly echoed in the story of her mother LuLing's early life in China, which forms the long middle section of the novel. Overbearing, accusatory, darkly pessimistic, LuLing has always been a burdento Ruth. Now, at 77, she has Alzheimer's, but luckily she had recorded in a diary the extraordinary events of her childhood and youth in a small village in China during the years that included the discovery nearby of the bones of Peking Man, the Japanese invasion, the birth of the Republic and the rise of Communism. LuLing was raised by a nursemaid called Precious Auntie, the daughter of a famous bonesetter. Once beautiful, Precious Auntie's face was burned in a suicide attempt, her mouth sealed with scar tissue. When LuLing eventually learns the secrets of Precious Auntie's tragic life, she is engulfed by shame and guilt. These emotions are echoed by Ruth when she reads her own mother's revelations, and she finally understands why LuLing thought herself cursed. Tan conjures both settings with resonant detail, juxtaposing scenes of rural domestic life in a China still ruled by superstition and filial obedience, and of upscale California half a century later. The novel exhibits a poignant clarity as it investigates the dilemma of adult children who must become caretakers of their elderly parents, a situation Tan articulates with integrity and exemplary empathy for both generations. Agent, Sandy Dijkstra. (Feb. 19) Forecast: With a readership already clamoring for the book, and Tan embarking on a 22-city tour, this novel will be a sure hit; its terrific sepia-tinted cover photo of a woman in old China only adds to its allure. Moreover, readers will be intrigued by Tan's hint that this story about family secrets is semi-autobiographical. The dedication reads: "On the last day my mother spent on earth, I learned her real name, as well as that of my grandmother." Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.