Reviews

From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith
Winnie is a powerhouse who has fought, laughed at, and struggled with life; Pearl is the daughter who grew up in Winnie's shadow. Pearl has a secret she doesn't want her mother to know because Winnie will blame herself, worry, be mad she wasn't told right away. Winnie has secrets she doesn't want to tell Pearl: she's afraid she won't understand, that she'll be hurt. Auntie Helen knows their secrets and thinks it is time for each of them to tell. Winnie was born in China seventy years ago and experienced her mother's desertion, a cultural revolution, and a very bad marriage. How can she explain these things to her American-born daughter, the one who keeps to herself and wouldn't even allow herself to cry when her father died? But as Winnie lets Pearl in, Pearl learns more than just her mother's story. She learns about herself, about the costs she and her mother pay to keep their secrets, and she learns to share her own secrets. Mothers can both support our roots so we can stand on our own and remove the top soil that nurtures us - this is a story of mothers doing both. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. 

Book Description
"Tan is one of the prime storytellers writing fiction today."

NEWSWEEK

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.

"The kind of novel that can be read and reread with enormous pleasure."

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Synopsis
A Chinese immigrant convinced she is dying threatens to celebrate the Chinese New Year by unburdening herself of everybody's secrets, thus prompting a series of misunderstandings. By the author of The Joy Luck Club. Reprint. NYT.

Synopsis
Here is the eagerly awaited new novel from the author of The Joy Luck Club, the powerful and moving bestseller hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "powerful . . . full of magic". Convinced that she is dying, an elderly Chinese woman living in San Francisco decides to reveal all the confidences entrusted to her, thus beginning a series of comic misunderstandings about the secrets people keep.

Synopsis
The extraordinary #1 bestseller by the author of The Joy Luck Club--a second novel even more acclaimed than her first. "Remarkable . . . mesmerizing . . . greatly satisfying."--The New York Times Book Review. "Riveting."--Anne Tyler, USA Today. HC: Putnam.

From the Publisher
A wonderful story , full of the richness of Chinese cutlure and language. Amy Tan really took me into her life, past and present. She has a great way of conveying the language and the images that only one from her world and experiences would know. I felt totally connected to Winnie Louie!

-Ceneta Lee Williams, Ballantine National Account Manager 

Midwest Book Review
Tan herself reads an exceptionally well-done abridged version of her story of Winnie Louie and Helen Kwong, who find their confidences shattered. This is more than a story about family relationships at a crossroads: it captures the essence of Chinese heritage and culture. 

Nialle Wood

The title of this novel refers to a woman in Chinese mythology who cared for a selfish man. Then the selfish man became a minor god--but she was forgotten. An interesting idea for the focus of a book, and Tan presents a very thorough set of imagery and patterns of behavior that fascinate, but even that little story smacks of the emotions that reign throughout the succeeding novel. Melancholy, melodrama, martyrism, misanthropy. I remember thinking as I read Joy Luck Club that the men were all rotten, but I was fourteen and thought most men were so rotten. Now, all of Tan's works begin to strike me as pejorative toward Chinese men, and the storylines seem falsely tragic. Her unique voice and beautiful descriptions, her complex and interesting explanations of superstitions and lost times and places, and her very readable pace do not make up for the unbelievably lachrymose plot.

Buy this book.