Book Reviews

Book Review - The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

I decided to do a book review with no experience whatsoever because I am just a book worm who likes reading, sue me.

The bonesetter's daughter is an intriguing book to some and others claim not to relate to it. Chief reason is that the readers claim not to have related to it and I understand them because in the beginning the part one of the book if you aren't a curious mind you will be lost and dump the book.

As for the curious minds like me, I wanted to know why Ruth struggled with life like that, why she could not speak at certain intervals in her adult life and why she chose not to have kids and not be married to Art. A weird peculiar love they shared which was something that kept me going on because I wanted to know more about their kind of love.

After the Part One of the book I like how she delves into her past which contextualizes and answered some of the unanswered questions from previous chapters. Ruth had a sad childhood and it is a pity party at some point which made me feel like reading through the chapters quickly to escape the feeling. However, the book got really interesting to me when the scenery to us back to ancient China which is something different.

The author managed to get me to imagine out of my normal 21st century scenery and go to the deep rural Asia which is something I liked and cannot get a feel of from most books which are modernized. I liked how elaborate Amy was through the eyes of LuLing Ruth's mother in detail. I felt connected to the story because it contains a lot of emotion which makes it relatable and it was able to show how cruel humans are to one another. These chapters touched on a lot of issues from societal norms, patriarchy, feminism, family secrets and dynamics.

To conclude I liked the book enough to read it twice and recommend it to anyone looking for a change of scenery and storyline. The writing style is not your usual cliché and it is different, likeable.