Lulu Minturn may earn a nice surplus by facilitating business deals between American and Chinese clients, but she generates the bulk of her income by managing sex workers who come to her as young as 13. Most of the story, which begins in 1905, is narrated by Violet, whose early confidence is squashed: “When I was seven,” she begins, “I knew exactly who I was: a thoroughly American girl in race, manners, and speech, whose mother, Lulu Minturn, was the only white woman who owned a first-class courtesan house in Shanghai.”Īs it turns out, Violet knows almost nothing about who she is - or who her mother is - but she’s well-informed about what goes on in a courtesan house. It has been almost 25 years since “The Joy Luck Club” launched Tan’s career, and this new novel explores some of the same themes of festering family secrets, the conflicts between mothers and daughters, and the sacrifices that women must make. The valley of “The Valley of Amazement” is very deep, indeed, an arduous journey of fraud, kidnapping and ritualized rape. That’s the first rule of the Shanghai courtesans in Amy Tan’s exhausting new novel, “The Valley of Amazement.” Just because these women provide sex in exchange for money, they’re not prostitutes, so don’t even think that.ĭeception and misperception are the stock in trade of the sex business - and of this story, too, which stretches over four generations and thousands of miles.
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