“The Bonesetter’s Daughter dramatically chronicles the
tortured, devoted relationship between LuLing Young and her
daughter Ruth. . . . A strong novel, filled with idiosyncratic,
sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity,
significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery.”
–Los Angeles Times
“TAN AT HER BEST . . . Rich and hauntingly forlorn . . . The
writing is so exacting and unique in its detail.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
“For Tan, the true keeper of memor
內容簡介：
At the beginning of Amy Tan''s fourth novel, two packets of
papers written in Chinese calligraphy fall into the hands of Ruth
Young. One bundle is titled Things I Know Are True and the other,
Things I Must Not Forget. The author? That would be the
protagonist''s mother, LuLing, who has been diagnosed with
Alzheimer''s disease. In these documents the elderly matriarch, born
in China in 1916, has set down a record of her birth and family
history, determined to keep the facts from vanishing as her mind
deteriorates.
A San Francisco career woman who makes her living by ghostwriting
self-help books, Ruth has little idea of her mother''s past or true
identity. What''s more, their relationship has tended to be an angry
one. Still, Ruth recognizes the onset of LuLing''s decline--along
with her own remorse over past rancor--and hires a translator to
decipher the packets. She also resolves to "ask her mother to tell
her about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. She
would sit down and not be in a hurry or have anything else to
do."
Framed at either end by Ruth''s chapters, the central portion
of The Bonesetter''s Daughter takes place in China in the remote,
mountainous region where anthropologists discovered Peking Man in
the 1920s. Here superstition and tradition rule over a succession
of tiny villages. And here LuLing grows up under the watchful eye
of her hideously scarred nursemaid, Precious Auntie. As she makes
clear, it''s not an enviable setting:
I noticed the ripe stench of a pig pasture, the pockmarked
land dug up by dragon-bone dream-seekers, the holes in the walls,
the mud by the wells, the dustiness of the unpaved roads. I saw how
all the women we passed, young and old, had the same bland face,
sleepy eyes that were mirrors of their sleepy minds.
Nor is rural isolation the worst of it. LuLing''s family, a clan of
ink makers, believes itself cursed by its connection to a local
doctor, who cooks up his potions and remedies from human bones. And
indeed, a great deal of bad luck befalls the narrator and her
sister GaoLing before they can finally engineer their escape from
China. Along the way, familial squabbles erupt around every corner,
particularly among mothers, daughters, and sisters. And as she did
in her earlier The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses these conflicts to
explore the intricate dynamic that exists between first-generation
Americans and their immigrant elders. --Victoria Jenkins --This
text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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