"The Joy Luck Club"

The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)

My wife told me I wasn't going to like this book. I hoped she was wrong - hey, I loved Spring Moon! - but is as usually the case, she turned out to be right. My big problem with this book is that everything interesting happened to the narrator's mother. Out of the 20 pages that I read, 2 pages were interesting stuff happening to the main character's mom, and the rest was the main character farting around playing mah-johngg, watching people cook, and reflecting on her own, comparatively boring life. What separates this book and Spring Moon is that in the latter we're seeing directly the interesting parts, and in the former we're just hearing little bits of the interesting part told to someone else. Unfortunately, this also separates a book I couldn't put down to one I couldn't stop myself from flipping through.

Grade: C+