“A New York Times Bestseller In 1949 four Chinese women – drawn together by the shadow of their past – begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and “say” stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died. When her daughter comes to take her place, she learns of her mother’s lifelong wish, and the tragic way in which it has come true.”
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan produced a lot of mixed feelings while I was reading it. I felt a certain sympathy for the characters; the mothers for what they went through in China, and the Daughters for the way they struggled between their mothers’ Chinese cultural background and the persuasive American culture they grew up in. However, I did not feel entirely convinced by the relationships between the mothers and their Daughters – it just didn’t quite seem real to me. I found myself becoming confused from very early on in the novel and ended up taking notes on each of the chapters so I could remember the stories that each character tells and what happens, and I found myself constantly referring back to these notes with each new chapter. I just couldn’t tell the characters apart well enough to remember the different characters sub-plots.
However, saying all this, I did find it an interesting read, reading about traditional Chinese culture and trying to understand things from their point of view (which in the odd chapter I almost did understand). The stories that were told about the mothers and what they experienced in China before moving to America were fascinating and has made me want to learn more about the Chinese culture.
So, a mixed review really. Excellent at telling old Chinese tales, but not so good at portraying character relationships.
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