The Joy Luck Club Audiobook By Amy Tan cover art

The Joy Luck Club

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The Joy Luck Club

By: Amy Tan
Narrated by: Gwendoline Yeo
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For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores the deep, complicated, and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters.

Amy Tan entices listeners to immerse themselves into the complex lives of these women.

©2006 Amy Tan (P)2022 Phoenix Books Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sagas United States World Literature China Heartfelt San Francisco
Beautiful Storytelling • Interwoven Narratives • Cultural Insights • Emotional Depth • Generational Perspectives
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I loved Amy Tam's gorgeous prose. The linked stories were fascinating and slowly revealed the characters. The narrator grated at times. Her Chinese mom voices were good, but the American male characters all sounded like cartoonish buffoons and most of the daughters sounded like imbeciles. And she pronounced "librarian" "li-BARE-ian" and "sword" "SWW-ord." Irritating as all get out. Didn't ruin the book for me, but certain passages were hard to get through.

Beautiful story, so-so narrator

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I've read Joy Luck Club before and am pleased to find that it largely withstands the test of time.

The narrator of this audiobook, while great at creating subtly different voices for the mothers and daughters, frequently relies on caricature-ish to the point of stereotyped accents for side characters (sometimes with little justification - why use a "sing-song" Chinese accent when everyone in a particular chapter is Chinese in China speaking Chinese that is only translated for the reader's benefit). This frequently pulled me out of the read and felt like a distraction.

good story, but narrator makes distracting choices

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As a student of the Chinese language, I really enjoyed this book. Learning more about Chinese (recent) history, culture, and the challenges immigrants face was really interesting and I thought the stories were well done even though it was a little hard to piece together who was who at times.

My biggest issue with this version was the voices. Every American voice sounds like a dumb valley girl. Many of the older Chinese women’s voices sounds like a witch. I would be interested to know if the author intended for the “voices” to be “heard” this way with her text. I found it kind of obnoxious and over done and really took away from the story. But I wouldn’t say they are so bad that you shouldn’t read it if you are interested, just not one of the best available.

An interesting snapshot of culture and language

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I saw the movie before and loved it, and now love the book even more! Such a great book of generational culture and the relationships between mothers and their daughters. Very much looking forward to reading more of Amy Tan.

Lovely stories- looking forward to more!

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The story is truly wonderful but the narrator is terrible in many parts of the story

read the book

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I know plenty of people did not enjoy the narrator for this novel, but I didn't think she was absolutely awful. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to listen to the whole book.

As for the novel itself, I really love the stories and how everything is intertwined. I had previously listened to an abridged version from my library, and would not recommend it at all. Make sure you pick up an unabridged version of this novel!

Beautifully written novel

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The stories of these mothers and daughters are very intriguing and offer narratives of Chinese immigrants and their first generation Chinese American children. I really enjoyed the story but at times the narrator would use a yelling voice for a character and that was a bit difficult to listen to.

Beautiful stories

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A beautiful, tragic but hopeful, beautifully written story about 4 Chinese mother/daughter pairs that is full of lessons and reflections anyone can relate to.

One my favorite novels

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Amazing dialogue. w w w w w w w w w w w w w a b a c d

Amazing Dialogue and Voice

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i think amy tan's prose is a special experience, and her stories are always deeply emotional to me. narrator made everything a bit cringey though, her strange voices for certain characters really threw me off

love amy tan, didn't enjoy the narrator

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