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The Bonesetter's Daughter
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known....
Set in contemporary San Francisco and in a Chinese village where Peking Man is being unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit — revealing deep wounds and profound hopes. Over the course of one fog-shrouded year — between one season of falling stars and the next — mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love.
Read by the author, Amy Tan, and actress Joan Chen (The Last Emperor), this story conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief.
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
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By: Naomi Jackson
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Mr. Fox
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- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
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By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Flame Tree Road
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India, 1870s. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhood - shunned by her loved ones and forced to live in solitary penance - Biren devotes his life to effecting change.
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Riveting Love Story
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Boy, Snow, Bird
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
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Charms for the Easy Life
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A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.
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So Lovely!
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Caramelo
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Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
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Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
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The Space Between Us
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Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
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A Story that stays with you
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The Bastard of Istanbul
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In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.
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A tender gift from far away
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Tiger, Tiger
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Overall
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One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
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a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso
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What listeners say about The Bonesetter's Daughter
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Pamela
- 04-18-07
Mediocre
I have read many Asian inspired novels, and this one hardly measures up to the standard I'm accustomed to receiving. Since Joy Luck Club, I have not been attracted to Amy Tan's writings because they seem to end up the same way...old world meets new world. I thought this one might be different based on the story line, and although I liked a few of the characters, it ended up the same as the others - present day back to the past and back to the present again. The bone collecting portions of the narration are a little confusing at times, and I didn't have the patience with the writer who appears to assume the audience is constantly up to speed on this kind of tradition. Needless to say, the listen didn't keep me captivated enough to want to go back and review some of the puzzling rituals for clarity. There are much better books available for the money.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rockchix
- 05-17-23
Good book but narration a struggle
The storyline of this book is definitely interesting and author Amy Tan keeps the audience engaged to the end. She truly has a beautiful way with words.
I cannot say the same for the person who narrated this audio book! Her voice was pleasant, kind of like your grandma reading a book …but when she is tired. She would run paragraphs into each other which confused scene changes…and there are many. When she attempted various ethnic accents she would vacillate in and out of them, especially during extended dialogue. It was annoying. She lost the distinguishing essence of many a character. For these reasons I am glad I was both listening to and reading this book at the same time. It helped provide a road map through an amateur book read.
I recommend the book but sincerely hope Audible uses a reader with more refined talents for Amy Tan’s other work.
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Overall
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-30-19
Great story, excellent narration
An insightful and original storyline. Tan brilliantly weaves together historical non-fiction, Chinese superstitions, and contemporary life- from China to America. The narration is outstanding, the plot intriguing, and the characters complex and interesting. Highly recommend!
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- Michelle P
- 06-10-15
Beautifully narrated
This was a pleasure to listen to. The story was moving and wonderful. I will definitely be listing to more Amy Tan
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Overall
- Tonya
- 12-07-08
A little bland and a little sad
Although the main narrator does an excellent job with the Asian accents, the rest of her narration is very monotone, dull and lacking a sharpness that's necessary when telling a story. The story itself is a little dull as well. I think it would be a better read than it is a listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-01-24
Started slow but adds to the story
I love this book. It starts out very slow but becomes important to the story.
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Performance
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- dorothy
- 11-12-12
Understanding
What did you love best about The Bonesetter's Daughter?
Amy Tan has taken the story of 2 women and woven it so that each reader can understand how unknown history can affect present reality.
What did you like best about this story?
I liked the "softening" of the daughter.
What does Amy Tan and Joan Chen bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The reader brings intonnation, pausing, vocal reflection that enriches the thought process accompanying the words.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Linking
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- HeelsYeah!
- 09-29-17
I love this story. I didn't want it to end. Great!
This was a very enjoyable book I did not want the story to end. My favorite part of the book was when Lou Ling was at the orphanage and fell in love. This is a beautiful love story not only for man and woman but mother and daughter.
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Overall
- Donna
- 02-03-08
Riveting!
This is the 3rd Amy Tan book I've read and I was not disappointed. I am amazed that a person can write a book so interesting, with so many lessons to be learned, and which evokes so much emotion. I highly recommend this book. I enjoyed the voices of the narrators as well
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Suze Weinberg
- 11-01-07
Lovely & Heartwarming
Beautifully written and beautifully read.
Especially interesting if you have a parent in the beginning throws of dementia.
I seem to gravitate toward books about the different Asian cultures and I found this one, as it jumped from present day to past day very inspiring and informative. The ancient Chinese culture is so steeped in mysterious ways and superstitions. It was a wonderful book.
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