The Bonesetter's Daughter

Author: Amy Tan

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 24.99 AUD
  • : 9780006550433
  • : HarperCollins
  • : Flamingo
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  • : 0.24
  • : July 2001
  • : 197mm X 130mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 24.99
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Amy Tan
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  • : Paperback
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  • :
  • : English
  • : 813.54
  • : very good
  • :
  • : 352
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Barcode 9780006550433
9780006550433

Description

Ruth, a ghostwriter of self-help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself. Her ailing mother Luling tries to hold on to the evaporating past, writing of her girlhood in a Chinese mountain village. Set in modern San Francisco and pre-war China, Tan's new novel is the mesmerising tale of a mother and daughter discovering what they share through history and heredity.

Reviews

'Compelling...exotic lands and the past lend themselves to poetry. Tan turns the familiar but harrowing accounts of pre-Communist Chinese women into a romantic and intriguing tale. LuLing is a classic Tan character, a resilient survivor who, like Olivia in The Hundred Secret Senses, betrays someone close to her with dire consequences.' TLS'A classic...[told with] originality and humour...this is a delicious pagge-turner that keeps you guessing, laughing and crying until the end.' Sunday Express'She is a dazzling storyteller, equally adroit at negotiating the pitfalls of Ruth's freewheeling partnership with Art and recreating traditional family life in rural China, with its superstition, ritual and social hierarchies. The Bonesetter's Daughter celebrates the importance of family history, in particular the stories shared between mother and daughter, and makes an unobtrusive plea for the right of all human beings, however humble or displaced, to an informed, sensitive and patient hearing.' Literary Review'Could there be a better model for writers today than Amy Tan? She tells great stories with powerful themes: love, belonging, exile, death, compassion. She moves easily between pathos, comedy and joy. She never shows off -- the technique is so perfect it is invisible. She is that rare, enviable creature, a literary novelist who writes bestsellers. This is great tragic writing, looking at the worst of human experience with a compassionate and understanding eye. I doubt if any writer alive is capable of telling such a story.' Scotland on Sunday

Author description

Amy Tan was born in California after her parents emigrated from China. She received her Master's degree in linguistics from San Jose University and has worked as a freelance business writer for major US corporations. She is also the author of the bestselling novels The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses. She lives in San Francisco.