Healing
I just finished reading The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan, and it's fabulous. I'd read The Joy Luck Club eons ago, and hadn't read any books by Tan since. What a mistake! I'll be checking out what else she's published.
The novel begins with Ruth Young, a middle-aged ghostwriter living in modern-day California. Ruth is living with her lover, Art, and feeling out of sorts with herself. Her mother, LuLing, is a first-generation Chinese immigrant with a failing memory. Worried about her mother, Ruth moves in with her to ensure that she's eating, resting, and taking her medication as she should.
It's then that Ruth recalls a sheaf of papers that her mother gave her many years before, written in Chinese. Ruth's Chinese is doubtable, so she'd never taken the time to translate her mother's writings. Suddenly overwhelmed with her mother's frgility, she pays a scholar to translate the text. What follows is the story of LuLing's life before she came to America, and it is a fascinating tale.
LuLing divulges that she was a bastard child, not actually the sister of the woman Ruth calls Aunt Gal. She was previously married, she taught at an orphanage, and she has been keeping certain secrets about herself and her life for nearly fifty years. Learning about who her mother is helps Ruth understand her own identity and appreciate her family history.
The story of LuLing's life is rich and detailed. I loved Tan's descriptive writing about life in China and LuLing's relationship with her mother. I also enjoyed the myriad parallels that Tan drew between Ruth and LuLing, similarities that Ruth herself did not know existed until she read the manuscript.
Worth reading.
The novel begins with Ruth Young, a middle-aged ghostwriter living in modern-day California. Ruth is living with her lover, Art, and feeling out of sorts with herself. Her mother, LuLing, is a first-generation Chinese immigrant with a failing memory. Worried about her mother, Ruth moves in with her to ensure that she's eating, resting, and taking her medication as she should.
It's then that Ruth recalls a sheaf of papers that her mother gave her many years before, written in Chinese. Ruth's Chinese is doubtable, so she'd never taken the time to translate her mother's writings. Suddenly overwhelmed with her mother's frgility, she pays a scholar to translate the text. What follows is the story of LuLing's life before she came to America, and it is a fascinating tale.
LuLing divulges that she was a bastard child, not actually the sister of the woman Ruth calls Aunt Gal. She was previously married, she taught at an orphanage, and she has been keeping certain secrets about herself and her life for nearly fifty years. Learning about who her mother is helps Ruth understand her own identity and appreciate her family history.
The story of LuLing's life is rich and detailed. I loved Tan's descriptive writing about life in China and LuLing's relationship with her mother. I also enjoyed the myriad parallels that Tan drew between Ruth and LuLing, similarities that Ruth herself did not know existed until she read the manuscript.
Worth reading.
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