She didn’t understand people who thrived on arguments and being right all the time. Her mother was that way, and what did it get her? Nothing but unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and anger.
You can always rely on Amy Tan for generational sagas about feudal cultures, abused wives, and wartime hardships. Her worlds make a pandemic seem less of a hardship by comparison, but I’ve been binge-reading Tan for different reasons. First is her balanced renderings of a relationship many middle-aged women can relate to, that of repressed daughters to domineering women. Tan’s mothers walk the line between tiger mom and smother love, with an added dash of dementia to season this story. Second, as a handwriting analyst, I appreciate her detailed observations on script. Calligraphy is a prominent plot device in this work, not only in the dynasty of ink-makers and calligraphers it depicts, but in the deceptions practiced by a child-protagonist who pretends to (and perhaps does indeed) channel a dead relative through her unpracticed hand. It’s a different take on the immigrant experience of the child interpreter/scribe navigating the parent’s puzzling world.
Published in 2003, this is a heavy tome at 387 pages, but the audiobook, read by the author and Joan Chen, is a joy to listen to at just under 12 hours. For a brief pictorial summary of this novel, watch this booktalk which recommends the story “for those who enjoy a mystery, a thrilling story, and a scandal.”