The Bonesetter's Daughter has a number of compelling sequences, but overall I found it a disappointment.

The first and last sections of the novel take place in the modern day and look at the life of a Chinese American woman living in San Francisco and working as a ghost writer. The middle section of the novel tells the story of her mother and her mother's life in China before she immigrates to the United States. I found the middle of this novel by far the most successful, although perhaps that is because I don't have enough personal knowledge of China in the late 1930s and 1940s to detect flaws in fact and tone.

The chapters depicting life in the present felt like well-trodden ground and gave few new insights into the modern world. They made good sense within the narrative structure of the novel, but the relationship issues seemed warmed over and the work conflicts weren't compelling to me.

I'm giving The Bonesetter's Daughter two and a half stars rather than two (or even one and a half) because I appreciate author Amy Tan's willingness to take on difficult subjects close to her own life. But if you are interested in exploring Tan's work, don't start with this novel. ( )

This is the third of Tan's books I've read, and follows a similar pattern to the other two (Joy Luck Club, Kitchen God's Wife): rebellious American daughter of misunderstood Chinese mother, culture clashes combined with generational differences, mother's secret childhood in China eventually is revealed to daughter, understanding ensues. Luckily, Tan's lyrical prose helps the formula remain fresh. The ending was unfortunately not as tight as it could have been; things were too tidy to be realistic, as if Tan were rushed to get the story out the door. I kind of think that if it were only the mother's story it would have been good as it stands, without mentioning the daughter at all. But it was still a good read - up until the end. ( )

Another beautiful mother/daughter story from Amy Tan. The Bonesetter's Daughter is told in two voices--Ruth Young, a ghostwriter who has a hard time communicating with the people she loves, and her mother, LuLing, a Chinese immigrant suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

As Ruth reads her mother's amazing journals, she is finally able to understand her and their relationship. ( )

Amy Tan's, The Bonesetter's Daughter, is a wonderful book that will make you want to read it again. It tells the story of a mother and her daughter, fighting to understand one another and live peacefully. A curse seems to be upon them but it is Ruth's job to find out if it's true. Ruth reads about her mother's(LuLing) life in China and how she came to know the Bonesetter's Daughter, or her nursemaid, also known as Precious Auntie. LuLing struggles to maintain her memories of her past and remember her mother's name. I liked this book because it was a great story about mothers and daughters. Also, I enjoyed the culturistic aspect of the book. ( )

Amy Tan has a gift of writing about the mother and daughter experience. One that transcends race or culture. The Bonesetter's Daughter is about the experience of a daughter coming to terms with her mother's illness and past. Just like the characters in The Joy Luck Club Ruth and her mother LuLing have a difficult relationship. Mostly do to the fact that the mother grow up in China and her daughter was raised in America. It is also a story of a daughter learning to appreciate her mother and culture a little more.

The Bonesetter's Daughter is a lot like The Joy Luck Club. It has fewer main characters. But Ruth and LuLing's relationship is almost exactly like that between the mothers and daughters featured in The Joy Luck Club. There is friction because Ruth does not understand her mother. Her mother is from China and after moving to America held on to a lot of her Chinese Culture. LuLing has been in the United States for almost 50 years yet doesn't speak or understand English that well. LuLing is also secretive of her past. All these situations lead to a very strained relationship that leave both Ruth and LuLing feeling unappreciated and misunderstood by one another.

The story is told from two points of view. The first person point of view is told by LuLing when she is describing her experience in China. The third person point of view in current times. It is the first person point of view that is the most catching. LuLing voice is powerful. The imagery and language that Tan uses to describe what she (LuLing) went through was fantastic. It expressed not only what the character was going through but the myths and beliefs that are part of Chinese culture. The strength in the story lies in the first person narrative of LuLings story.

The one major draw back with the story is that there are a lot of similarities between The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter's Daughter. Ruth and LuLing's characters and circumstances could have been switched with any of the mother-daughter pairs in The Joy Luck Club and they would not have been out of place. It makes theme and relationship between them appear recycled and therefore the outcome is not a surprise.

Also, there has been criticism online that Tan has a tendency to use stereotypes in her writing. I noticed that in this novel but that could be because I was looking for it.

Pros: Imagery, Storyline, Characters
Cons: Formula, Stereotypes, Predictable

Overall Recommendation:

Highly recommended with a precaution: If you have read The Joy Luck Club (or maybe any of her others works) the style and formula are easy noticeable and takes away some of the impact of the story. ( )

This story is a very poignant look at mothers and daughters and the bonds and relationships they have that can be so tenuous and so strong all at the same time -- ebbing and flowing like the tides. In this book, Ms. Tan takes us into the connections that are forged from generation to generation through the women. Well written, I particularly liked hearing about LuLing's experiences and how they had molded her to be the mother she became to her daughter, Ruth. A journey of discovery for Ruth, she learns about her mother's past and about a grandmother she never knew she had. A touching 'memoir" and a wonderful look at the fierceness of emotions that are invoked when it comes to the most connected relationship any of us will ever have with another human being. Good or bad.

This one earned my tears. ( )

I have got several of Amy Tan's books in my stacks of TBR books, each of which I have picked up just because it sounded interesting to me. This is the first of her books that I have actually read, though. I really did enjoy it. Lu Ling was both sad (due to her dementia) at times and funny. I enjoyed the sections of the book that were narrated by Ruth, but enjoyed the part narrated by LuLing the best. ( )

Good read. I was especially interested in the mother-daughter relationships and how they each blindly made choices in life without realizing the consequenses...and how the bad choices were each in a way redeemed in the end.

See more of my reviews at http://myobsessionwithbooks.blogspot....
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I found this book to be very interesting. For some reason I could never leave it alone. Even when I thought of myself loosing interest i was quickly proven wrong because i'd quickly be in grossed in it.
This book was beautifully written in an interseting way. It masterfully follows the lives of two people, mother and daughter, at different times of each of thier lives. I found it smart ot use two differnet time periods to revel the book's true nature.
This book really is sad because of all the stuff that happens and all of the family drama that occurs within the book. One of the books main characters LuLing is a very strong person whom overcame all of the hurtles thrown at her and her daughter is the same way. It is just so beautifully written.
This book, though great, is not for the normal reader. The person reading it has to have patience because the plot unfolds rather slow. The reader has to also be able to be at a certain intellect to appreciate the level of beauty in the book. All in all i would have to say that this book is a must read. ( )

In The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan draws the heartbreaking, complex picture of the relationship between Ruth Young, the middle-aged Chinese-American daughter of LuLing. LuLing's story is woven into Ruth's life just as quickly and mercilessly as it is threaded into the reader's life. It is a sad tale involving dragon bones, World War II China, love, death, and acceptance. Ruth assists in the writing of self-help books; on top of her problems with the authors she helps, she is increasingly finding difficulty with her home situation - Art, her boyfriend, is a divorcee with two daughters, and her struggle to understand her mother's words is apparent.

LuLing has given her a chance to understand her, however; Ruth receives a diary of sorts describing - well, she isn't sure. She holds on to it for a long time as her Chinese is terrible, and it's not until she finally submits it to an expert to translate that she realizes LuLing's signs of Alzheimer's aren't quite as bad as she suspects. She discovers with the reader the truth of LuLing's past, the significance of ghosts, and the beauty that can come from healing past scars.

It's hard to formulate a real review of this book; there is so much going on in it - I haven't even summarized the half of it. It is divided into three parts. The first describes Ruth in a bit of detail including what she's dealing with and her concern for her mother. The second is the translation of LuLing's diary as presented to Ruth by the translater who, we discover in the third part, has fallen in love with LuLing through her words. It's not quite as miraculous as it seems; there is depth in the details presented and one easily feels he/she is struggling through World War II era China right along with LuLing and her family. The third part illustrates Ruth's reactions to the tale, and her decision of what to do with her mother.

This is an engrossing book which I barely found time to put down. The characters drew me in more than anything else. Ruth reminds me a bit of myself - nitpicky, a little unreasonable, but extremely concerned for those she loves. LuLing shows a strength of will and heart that is almost incomparable by any of the other characters in my life; I imagine it would be an honor to know such a formidable woman. Art, despite Ruth's misgivings, is an ever-supportive partner. GaoLing, LuLing's sister (of sorts), shows admirable confidence in her sister's ability to survive; she also sticks by her through and through without hesitation. It was a quick read, but by no means a light one. I found myself crying several times throughout this book, maybe in part because of the river-flow of smooth, eloquently chosen words, but I think it is mostly because I was sincerely torn when the characters were. I felt for them. I felt like I was with them.

As Ruth finds her voice in the course of this book, so I also felt like I had found something unrecognized previously within me. At the beginning, she is frustrated, feeling useless as one able to speak but unable to speak for her mother - in her defense? Or perhaps she is upset because she cannot find the words to tell her mother how she feels. Once she has read LuLing's story, however, she finds her voice once again. She speaks out to GaoLing, to Art, to every influence in her life she feels is wanting. Her voice returns as her strength deepens, and I had the impression this is because she discovered a part of her that was once lost. She never knew, of course, LuLing's struggles, but by learning the truth she has gained bits and pieces of her own past, as well as her mother's and grandmother's, thus puzzling together a whole Ruth who feels more complete to face the changes coming in her life. Her voice returns, and I felt full again too.

The Bonesetter's Daughter is an illustrious painting of the lives within. Layers reveal hidden intricacies of each character - like a special cream-filled surprise. I enjoyed this book, but it hasn't encouraged me to read other books by the author. This is my first Amy Tan book, unlike most other readers who started with Joy Luck Club (I haven't even seen the movie!), but as beautifully executed as it was, it wasn't memorable. It's been four days since I've finished it, but I sadly can't think of very much else to say in my review. I loved it while I was reading it. I was inside it (as I mentioned); I felt I was part of the story. If I had reviewed it immediately, this post would probably be much longer and full of details pertaining to ink-making and hard work, Ruth and LuLing's voices, mother-daughter relationships, love in times of war, and who knows what else! But I quickly forgot all the details I wanted to impress in relation to these themes; even now, I can only recall that these were themes, but I wouldn't be able to give a detailed account.

It was an extremely good book and I would recommend it to anyone, but only under the expectation that the joy won't last. This is not one of those books that will become a "favorite book;" you won't cry for the characters after the last page is turned. You'll have a fond memory of it, knowing that you really loved it, but you won't be able to say why. ( )

The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan, tells the story of three generations of women. In the present day, Ruth Young discovers her mother, LuLing Young, has Alzheimer's disease. LuLing has already given Ruth a manuscript written in Chinese titled, Things I Know Are True, which Ruth has not read. Then, as she is cleaning her mother's house, Ruth discovers anther manuscript - Things I Must Not Forget. Ruth has these translated, and LuLing's story comprises the main portion of The Bonesetter's Daughter.

LuLing's story about growing up in rural China while being taken care of by Precious Auntie, going through WWII and the cultural revolution, and finally moving to America to find a new life, is wonderfully told. However, the first and third parts, about Ruth and LuLing in present-day America, were somewhat disjointed. I found it especially difficult to connect the present-day LuLing to her younger self - the woman that LuLing becomes is almost a caricature of a harping, overbearing mother, but there is almost no evidence of this woman in the younger LuLing. ( )

This is my first read of Amy Tan's work, and I won't be rushing out to buy more of her novels. I enjoyed The Bonesetter's Daughter, especially the second part narrated by Ruth's mother LuLing Young. But, I found this story about a modern woman learning about her ageing mother's past interesting but not remarkable. I also found the ending contrived with the main character (Ruth's long-time partner Art) suddently acting very much out-of-character. ( )

Interesting book. The treatment of the disfigured aunt was pretty sad. One I would recommend as a read but not to buy. ( )

Amy Tan’s book The Bonesetter’s Daughter was released on the 19th of February, 2001 (her birthday, coincidentally) after a nearly eight year hiatus since her last novel, The Hundred Secret Senses. Fans of Tan tend to treat each new novel like the rare treat that it is- greeting each arrival with the kind of joy one takes in a rare pleasure. With four novels and two children’s books to her name over the last 20 years, Tan is not the most prolific of writers. But she is certainly one of the most beloved. The Bonesetter’s Daughter will only make her more so.

It is the story of Ruth Young- a Chinese-American woman trying to come to terms with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in her mother, LuLing, while trying to diagnose what has gone wrong with her own ten year relationship to the man she thought she loved. A ‘ghostwriter’ who is much better at helping other people express their thoughts than at giving voice to her own, Ruth is losing the battle to preserve her identity just as her mother is losing her memory. But the day she faces up to how drastically LuLing’s disease has progressed, Ruth also finds a stack of papers written in careful Chinese script- her mother’s memoirs. Ruth sets out to translate them, and in so doing releases a host of secrets from her mothers past like moths in an old trunk in the attic.

LuLing was raised in a small Chinese village called Immortal Heart, and better known to the outside world as the site where Peking Man was discovered. Born just prior to the Revolution, she was for some unknown reason an outcast despite being the eldest daughter in a highly respected family of ink-makers. Her only companion was her nurse maid- a woman with a badly burned face she called Precious Auntie. Precious Auntie was the daughter of a famous bonesetter in this village made famous by bones, but her fortunes had turned, leaving her in this doubtful position with the ink-maker’s family after the death of her father. The day before LuLing is to be married, Precious Auntie throws herself into a ravine- thereby bringing bad luck and destruction on the family. Believing that her ghost would haunt them forever, her mother casts LuLing out of the family, in the hopes that Precious Auntie’s spirit would follow. LuLing endures the onset of World War II and the invasion of China by the Japanese, and eventually escapes to America, still believing herself cursed for somehow betraying her nursemaid.

As Ruth detangles the past she learns things about her mother that make her a different person from the woman Ruth has known. Her age, family, and even her name were different. Some of Tan’s inspiration for this novel came from dealing with the terminal illness of her own mother (one of the reasons that the book was delayed nearly eight years), and her discovery that her mother had a different name in China than she carried in the United States.

There are three voices in this book- Ruth’s, LuLing’s and Precious Auntie’s. Ruth has the harassed tones of the modern age- third person, quick, always guilty for never quite living up to the demands of the moment. Luling speaks in the first person, like a storyteller. And Precious Auntie, whose tongue was burned, speaks only with grunts, hand signals, and by banging on pots when she is very angry. One thing all three women have in common- they all write beautifully. Precious Auntie, who learned more of medicines, reading and writing than was good for a woman to know in China, was a calligrapher of the highest order- her work was famous in the region. She taught her artistry to LuLing, who became equally talented. This skill stood her in good stead at the end of the war- amongst the multitudes seeking to escape China she was chosen for being an artist and “a living treasure”. Her daughter, who barely learned Chinese and does all her writing on her laptop, learned none of this until it was nearly too late.

Tan weaves an exploration of language into the pages- Ruth’s own mastery of English is so absolute that she can seamlessly disappear behind the words of others, although the writing is all her own. As she struggles to translate her mother’s memoirs, she is brought face to face with the many layers of meaning in Chinese words and script. Symbols that seem to translate flatly into English as “Eldest Daughter”, “Honored Aunt”, or “Bad Luck” contain a wealth of nuances in written and spoken context. This struggle between a mother who loves the language of China and a daughter who speaks it indifferently gives rise to years of misunderstanding between the two- a gulf that Ruth only begins to cross when her mother seems to be drifting beyond reach.

Tan’s deft transitions between mother and daughter, China and America, present and past, will remind readers of her first novel, the Joy Luck Club. The Bonesetter’s Daughter is a beautiful book. It was worth every day of the last eight years’ wait.

The first time Amy Tan - The New York Times best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Hundred Secret Senses - learned her mother's real name as well as that of her grandmother was on the day she died. It happened as Tan and several sidblings - unified by a need to feel helpful instead of helpless - gathered to discuss their dying mother's past and prepare her obituary. Tan was stunned when she realized she had not known her own mother's birth name. It was just one of several surprises. In the act of writing a simple obituary Tan came to realize there was still so much she did not know about her. Soon afterwards she began rewriting the novel she had been working on for five years. Inspired by her own experiences with family secrets kept by one generation from the next, and drawn from a lifetime of questions and images, the result is The Bonesetters's Daughter. The story begins when Ruth Young, a ghostwriter of self-help books, comes across a clipped stack of papers in the bottom of a desk drawer. Young has been caring for her ailing mother, LuLing, who is beginning to show the unmistakable signs of Alzheimer's disease. Written in Chinese by LuLing years earlier, when she first started worrying something was wrong with her memory, the papers contain a narrative of LuLing's life as a girl in China, and the life of her own mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the village of Xian Xin - Immortal Heart - near the Mouth of the Mountain. Within the calligraphed pages Ruth finds the truth about a mother's heart, what she cannot tell her daughter yet hopes her daughter will never forget. With her latest novel Amy Tan explores the changing place one has in a family of names that were nearly forgotten. Just as she herself has done, Tan shows Ruth finding the secrets and fragments of her mother's past - its heartfelt desires, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes - and with each new discovery reconfiguring her assessment of the woman who shaped her life, who is in her bones. The extent to which Tan's newest novel mixes pure fiction with elements of autobiography is made clear by Tan herself. In acknowledgements of The Bonesetter's Daughter she writes, "The heart of this story belongs to my grandmother, its voice to my mother." ( )

Ruth is a 40-something American woman who has come to the realization that her Chinese immigrant mother, LaoLing, is losing her memory as a result of dementia. LaoLing, who realized that her memory was leaving her before her daughter did, painstakingly penned her life story and secrets to share with her daughter. Much of the novel is LaoLing's memories of her life and experiences in China. Two mother-daughter stories are presented in the multigenerational, bi-continental family story, that of LaoLing and Ruth, as well as that between LaoLing and her own mother. Past and present were woven together nicely, and the emotions associated with memory loss are explored thoroughly. The novel did not quite live up to The Joy Luck Club, even though the themes were similar, but I still enjoyed it. Tan continues to have a witty style of writing that is heartfelt as well as humorous. ( )

Amazing read reminding us all how little we truly know about another's life... ( )

Started out slow for me, but I enjoyed it immensely once I got into it. ( )

Amy Tan is a sure bet. Of course this book is good! ( )

3472. The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan (read Aug 15, 2001) I have read Amy Tan's three prior novels, and liked The Joy Luck Club (read 22 Aug 1999) and, even more, The Kitchen God's Wife (read 29 Aug 1999). This book is not nearly as enjoyable, since what would be funny is sobered by the fact that the Chinese mother is slipping into Alziemer's disease. I was often bored while reading this book, and enjoyed it the least of any of Tan's books. ( )

I very much enjoyed this book, particularly the interplay of the various characters who find themselves enmeshed across lifetimes. This is a fascinating fictional perspective on the buddhist concept of reincarnation. I like the fact that one of the bad guys gets reincarnated as a dog. ( )

Amy Tan is an elegant storyteller and she does not disappoint with The Bonesetter's Daughter. Tan takes us again into the often tense and misunderstood mother-daughter relationship world, but continues to show the love, sacrifice and tenderness as well. ( )

I read this a few years ago; liked it a lot. I found the mother/daughter relationship touching, not cliched. Keep meaning to read more of Amy... ( )

Formulaic, yet addictive...

I almost feel bad criticizing this book for being overly formulaic when I actually enjoyed parts of it so much. Yes, this is typical Amy Tan fare, which includes mother-daughter angst, immigrant culture, and old Chinese family secrets dusted off and gradually exposed through some engrossing storytelling. The story shifts between present-day San Francisco where we follow Ruth Young and her struggles with her Chinese-born mother, LuLing, and pre-WW2 rural China where we are treated to sumptious descriptions of old customs and superstitions surrounding LuLing's family origins. As with Tan's other books, it is when she takes the reader back in time to China that the story really shines. When the plot returns to America, it almost feels like a complete let-down.

In present time, Ruth's mother, LuLing, suffers from dementia, and as a result she has written down her life story in Chinese for her daughter to read. Ruth, who is not fluent in written Mandarin, hires someone to translate the story, and it is through this translation we are treated to the memoirs of LuLing. The bonesetter is her grandfather, and the daughter actually refers to LuLing's real mother - or Precious Auntie as she is called. This tragic title character is at the center of the story both before and after her death, and the injustices done to her by her adversaries as well as her own family are heartwrenching. The dynamic between LuLing and her "sister" GaoLing is also well portrayed, and the sisterly jealousies as well as loyalties are well characterized. The family business aspects, caligraphy descriptions and the ink-producing process are fascinating to read.
All the superstitions and ghosts that envelope every character in China, however, are the most satisfying parts.

There are numerous subplots and transitory characters, both in China and in San Fransisco. There are the two American missionaries along with Sister Yu, who run the orphanage where LuLing spends several years both as student and teacher. There are the British mother and daughter and their talking parrot in Hong Kong where LiuLing as a maid learns English. There are the archeologists who are excavating the Peking Man - and the one who wins LuLing's heart. The subplot involving Dottie and Lance from Ruth's childhood, however, albeit interesting, seemed to fizzle out without a proper conclusion.
Finally, the main male characters in the story were quite one-dimensional (saintly or evil) - but this is rather typical in Tan's writing.

The end is too contrived in its desperate attempt to provide some sort of closure between everyone. Also, the translator's role becomes a bit too sentimental. You leave the book wishing to read more about China, which is actually a good feeling.

All in all, this is a comforting hammock read without profound implications. ( )

It has been quite a while since I read Amy Tan's first three books and this fourth one did fall short of my expectations. Amy Tan fans will enjoy but if you haven't read Tan before I do not recommend this as your first read, try The Joy Luck Club or The Hundred Secret Senses instead. ( )