![]() 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. 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. ![]() (Granted, my few childhood years in Singapore probably give me more of a leg up in the mind's eye than most people get.) 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. 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). Since I always seem to start out with the negatives, I want to say that there was a lot here that I loved. I loved The Joy Luck Club| and The Kitchen God's Wife and was very excited to find this book at a library sale. ![]()
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