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Ladataan... The Valley of Amazement (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 2013; vuoden 2014 painos)Tekijä: Amy Tan (Tekijä)
TeostiedotIhmeiden laakso (tekijä: Amy Tan) (2013)
  
Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta.   Abcdarian | May 18, 2024 |  Natt90 | Mar 23, 2023 |  ) rkleslje | Jan 8, 2023 |  ) mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 | Since I always seem to start out with the negatives, I want to say that there was a lot here that I loved. As with the other two books of Tan's that I've read, there's a fantastic cast of well-structured characters, some of them almost mythical in their story lines (like Madam Li and Perpetual). The world building is beautifully thorough as well: though I know next to nothing about early-twentieth-century Shanghai, I felt as though I could clearly envision the worlds that Lulu and Violent walked through. (Granted, my few childhood years in Singapore probably give me more of a leg up in the mind's eye than most people get.) Part of what I loved about the previous two Amy Tan novels I've read was the interaction between different generations of women from different cultures. The cover copy of this book promised "two women's intertwined fates" and "spanning more than forty years and two continents", but we only had Violet's point of view for the first 432 pages! An occasional side trip for a story from a secondary character's perspective did help keep from bogging down--Magic Gourd's whole chapter, "Etiquette for Beauties of the Boudoir," was a definite highlight. I was a bit sad that after over 500 pages, we didn't get this kind of dedication to Flora's story--just a few pages of monologue that didn't feel as real as anyone else's. My chief complaint, though, was how bleak the book was overall. Children with good lives hated their parents. Day-to-day life, which might have offered chance for everyday humor or simple pleasures, was skipped over quickly. We didn't learn much about how Violet adjusted to her fate, what her lessons were like, how she felt about taking different men as lovers. I almost gave up around the middle, but I held out for the things I loved in Tan's other writing--and sure enough, they appeared. At Violet's bleakest moment, she forges a new bond and finally makes a desperate plan to escape--something I'd been waiting for since the beginning. Her experience with other women, her coming into her own, her finally starting to reach out to others made the rest of the upper-side-of-average book worth it. From an editorial standpoint, I do wish we could have had more of the Minturn women interwoven with the others. I'm heavily biased toward the structure of The Joy Luck Club--it was one of the first books I read that wasn't a straight-to-the-end narrative. While I don't think the suspense would have held as neatly with Lulu's story appearing sooner, I do think it would help resolve some of the disconnect between the love she expresses for her daughter in her section and the great dearth of it that Violet reports. Surely some of Lulu's gestures would have come across even the most petulant child's self-centeredness? And why would Lulu give her daughter amber, the symbol of her hatred for her own mother? I'm glad I got to read Amy Tan's latest book, and I look forward to chipping away at her previous novels as well...but I'll be leaving this book at the office for someone else to enjoy rather than keeping it in my hoard. (  ) books-n-pickles | Oct 29, 2021 |
 In her first novel since 2005’s Saving Fish from Drowning, Tan again explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, control and submission, tradition and new beginnings. Jumping from bustling Shanghai to an isolated village in rural China to San Francisco at the turn of the 19th century, the epic story follows three generations of women pulled apart by outside forces. The main focus is Violet, once a virgin courtesan in one of the most reputable houses in Shanghai, who faces a series of crippling setbacks: the death of her first husband from Spanish influenza, a second marriage to an abusive scam artist, and the abduction of her infant daughter, Flora. In a series of flashbacks toward the book’s end, Violet’s American mother, Lulu, is revealed to have suffered a similar and equally disturbing fate two decades earlier. The choice to cram the truth behind Lulu’s sexually promiscuous adolescence in San Francisco, her life as a madam in Shanghai, and Violet’s reunion with a grown Flora into the last 150 pages makes the story unnecessarily confusing. Nonetheless, Tan’s mastery of the lavish world of courtesans and Chinese customs continues to transport.  In her first novel in eight years, Amy Tan (Saving Fish From Drowning; The Joy Luck Club) spins a tale that propels us into the lives of three generations of women on both sides of the Pacific. At its vortex is half-Chinese and half-American Violet, an infinitely charismatic Shanghai courtesan who despite her material prosperity and professional success struggles with her identity, her past, and the possibility of real love. Tan's portrait of Violet's dominant, yet emotionally wounded mother Lucia possesses a poignancy that threads the novel together into a piece
Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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 Google Books — Ladataan...LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Kongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo: (3.53)
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