the valley of amazement by amy tan summary

Other than that, I liked the characters and how they were developed. It seemed a stretch and not one I was inclined to forgive twice. I couldn’t believe that a mother would have her child taken from her and lay in bed for three days and then be OK. When Lucretia and Violet lost their children, they seemed very resigned to this fact. However, there were times I found them a bit hard to stomach. The story was very long and in the end, I felt it could have been shortened.įor the most part, I felt the characters were credible. Violet’s marriage to Perpetual is a major one and I grew frustrated during that part of the book. I felt there were a lot of side plots unnecessary parts of the book. This didn’t bother me too much at first, but it got to be a bit much and it felt grating and tiresome after a while. Violet grew up living in one, worked in one, and almost owned one at a point. And reading it now, even if I had, I don’t think I would have realized it focused so much on courtesans as it did. Of course, as always, I didn’t read the book summary.

Spanning more than forty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement resurrects pivotal episodes in history: from the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, to the rise of the Republic, the explosive growth of lucrative foreign trade and anti-foreign sentiment, to the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreign “Shanghailanders” living in the International Settlement, both erased by World War II. Other books by Tan reviewed on this blog:Ī sweeping, evocative epic of two women’s intertwined fates and their search for identity, that moves from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village.

The valley of amazement by amy tan summary