Reading year 2014: Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement is compulsively readable
It’s about Violet, the half-Chinese daughter of an American woman who runs a courtesan house in Shanghai. The Qing dynasty is falling, anti-foreign sentiment is rising, business is failing, and mother and daughter are fighting. Like mothers and daughters everywhere. There’s also a fat, cranky cat named Carlotta. We started reading it yesterday and now you’ll have to pry it out of our claws.
Before The Valley of Amazement, we read Monsieur Pain, a short novel by Roberto Bolano, three Guardians of the Galaxy compilations and The Age of Ultron. After The Valley of Amazement, we’re reading The Bone Clocks, which Noel bought for us in Singapore. (Didn’t want to take chances with the port congestion.)
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