Another Book

A few days ago I finished another book.  This one was "The Valley of Amazement" by Chinese-American writer Amy Tan.

Tan gained fame for her first novel, "The Joy Luck Club", which was published in 1989.  I enjoyed that book as well as the movie that was based on it.  Tan has written a number of novels since then, but "The Valley of Amazement" (her most recent, published in 2013) is only the second book that I have read by her.

The novel begins in Shanghai in the early 20th century.  The main character is Violet, the daughter of an American woman who owns a first-class courtesan house.  The courtesans who live there do not consider themselves to be common prostitutes. However, the establishment is basically a very expensive brothel with a very elaborate set of rules and traditions.  Through trickery Violet is kidnapped and sold to another courtesan house.

It is an interesting story that spans more than forty years.  However, it is definitely a book that in another era would have been proverbially "banned in Boston".  There is a lot of sex, and more detail than is necessary.  What is especially disturbing is that most of the courtesans are teenagers.  In Violet's case, an auction is held, and she is "deflowered" on her fifteenth birthday.

The author was inspired to write this book after seeing a photograph of Shanghai courtesans.  One of them was wearing attire identical to the what her grandmother was wearing in an old family photo.  It made the author wonder if perhaps there was a family secret that her grandmother had never revealed. Tan did laborious research on the courtesan houses, and it took her eight years to write this book.  The final product is a book that perhaps gives us more information than we really want.