The Valley of Amazement

After I heard Amy Tan being interviewed on NPR about how she came to write The Valley of Amazement (#390), I knew I wanted to read it.  For her, this is personal.  She confirms it in her Acknowledgment section, where she mentions sharing a similar journey with one of my favorite authors, Lisa See.

This novel mainly chronicles the life of Violet Minturn, half-Chinese, half-American daughter of one of Shanghai's most notorious madams in the early twentieth century.  In Hidden Jade Path, Lulu Mimi's first class courtesan house, East can meet West on equal terms.  Deals are struck, politics hammered out, fortunes made and lost thanks to Lulu's skill in matching up the right parties.  Violet has grown up in this atmosphere, thinking she's American.  When she begins to learn the truth about her parentage she is shocked.  As she and her mother are about to leave for San Francisco, Violet is separated from her mother by trickery and sold into a second class courtesan house.  Her struggles to survive and accept what fate has dealt her seem almost insurmountable.  But she clings to the hope that the painting of  The Valley of Amazement from the brush of her father is real, and that she will find it someday for herself.  When she does, it is not the idyllic place she has always pictured in her mind.

Since both Lucia, or Lulu, as she prefers to be known by her customers, and her daughter Violet spend most of their adult years in courtesan houses, the nature of the subject matter of this book may be too graphic for some readers.  If you accept this as a common way of life in many parts of the globe throughout the ages, it can be enlightening to realize just how skilled and psychologically acute many of the most successful courtesans were during their prime.  If they had any business acumen, they were constantly preparing for the day when they no longer had patrons to command.  Love has many guises, but few survive the scrutiny of those whose profession is love itself.  In fact, Violet and Lucia cannot recognize what is under their own noses until it is almost too late.

Six hundred pages that just fly by.  Highly recommended.