Like a coupling of The Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha, The Valley of Amazement treads familiar Amy Tan territory -- examining the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, and in particular, the extra strain between culturally different mothers and daughters -- this time set in turn-of-the-20th-century Shanghai courtesan houses.
Taking eight years to write -- and using as its inspiration the peculiar picture of Tan's grandmother that the author shockingly realised meant her grandma must have been such a courtesan -- The Valley of Amazement is rich in the details of Shanghai life: from the political to the domestic; the universal to the specific; the mundane to the fantastic. Naturally, the daily routines, the surroundings and the training of the courtesans is a large part of this detail and I found this part of the story to be fascinating -- considering the lives that 5000 years of Chinese culture forced onto the women of the day, had these courtesans not initially been mostly orphaned or kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, one might almost envy the freedom and glamour of their profession. Almost. It was an education to me that the courtesans of a "first class house" were trained in singing and storytelling and that a potential suitor was expected to woo her with gifts and attention -- it could take weeks before a man was invited to a courtesan's boudoir for tea and the popular "flowers" could sign exclusive contracts with their suitors that not only paid the women richly but promised fidelity on both sides (excepting, of course, relations that the man had with his wife -- legitimate sons were always in demand) that would last a season or up to a couple of years. Sadder is what lay in the courtesan's not-too-distant future: washed up by her mid-twenties, she would ideally be married, and failing that, taken on as a concubine. Failing that, she would have hopefully saved enough money to open her own courtesan house, and failing that, she would be forced to ply her trade in progressively worsening situations, eventually destined to become the lowest class of roadside prostitute.
***Spoilers Beyond***
The Valley of Amazement tells the story of three generations of women: the headstrong American Lulu, who ran away from her family of wacky Freethinkers to follow the Chinese artist who had impregnated her to Shanghai, only to have his family shun her and eventually steal her second child, a coveted son; Lulu's daughter Violet, who inherited her mother's strong will, but after accidentally being abandoned by Lulu and sold to a courtesan house, had to find her own way through life; and Violet's daughter Flora, who, in one of many instances of fate repeating itself through the generations, was stolen from her real mother by the American family of her dead father. Other repeats of fate: Both Lulu's lover, Lu Shing the artist, and Violet's husband, Perpetual the poet, were plagiarists who passed off others' work as their own; unplanned pregnancy, and not just with these three generations, but Lulu's mother and grandmother also had moments of unrestrained passion that resulted in unplanned daughters; and the titular painting, The Valley of Amazement, links unrelated characters through time and space. The real history of the time period also plays a large role, with references to the Boxer Rebellion, the abdication of Puyi (the last emperor), WWI and the Spanish Flu Pandemic.
As I began with, this is typical Amy Tan in that The Valley of Amazement is framed by the relationships between mothers and daughters, but in this case, the relationships are mostly about their absence. Lulu is able to literally take a slow boat to China because she resents the fact that her parents were so self-absorbed in their own lives that she never felt loved by them; leaving was easy and she vowed when Violet was born to never let her feel unloved. And yet, as this book begins, Violet is seven and feels like everything and everyone at the Hidden Jade Path courtesan house is more important to her mother than she is -- even birthday celebrations are forgotten as Lulu is embroiled in her duties as a Madam. When Lulu is tricked into leaving Violet behind in Shanghai, and further tricked into believing her daughter had died, Lulu is heart-broken, yet never, over the course of many years, attempts to seek the truth or return to Shanghai. At the same time, it is very easy for Violet to believe that her mother had abandoned her on purpose, and when her own daughter is born, she makes her own vow to never allow Flora to feel abandoned. And yet, when her late husband's legitimate wife showed up to take possession of Flora and whisk her back to the States, Violet immediately submitted to her fate as a half-Chinese, undocumented woman who existed in a limbo with no rights, and let her daughter go without a fight. I didn't understand why Violet took so long contacting her mother to let her know she was actually alive (she could have, at a minimum, avoided the return to prostitution and the disastrous trip to Moon Pond village) and also why, when Flora was found, they decided to only observe her from an anonymous distance -- and especially when she was an obviously unhappy child. Despite this strange structure, the reunions between the generations was touching to me and redeemed the frustration I felt over what I thought were unnecessary separations.
I also began by name-dropping Memoirs of a Geisha and I am compelled to add that The Valley of Amazement is a much better book than that was -- I remember feeling dissatisfied with Arthur Golden's depiction of geisha life and didn't think his insights into the mind of a young girl -- especially one who had been sold into sex slavery -- rang true. Call me sexist, but Amy Tan did a much better job of revealing the hopes and fears of a girl in that position; her story had a legitimacy that Golden's lacked.
