The Joy Luck Club

Huh, I didn't realise my mum read this and that she rated it 4 stars. I wonder what her experience was like reading it and if, as a baby boomer, it helped her understand her own relationships with her immigrant parents? 

I honestly expected to like this book more but ultimately, I think the experience was a little ruined by the audiobook. I listened to the version narrated by Gwendoline Yeo and it felt like she was rushing through it. I had to check that I hadn't accidentally turned the speed up. Her pronunciation was hackneyed in parts and some of the voices and accents were awful. (Some voices sounded like caricatures or parodies and others, for example the American men, were just weird). I sampled the version written by the author and it didn't sound any better. 

I was really interested in the first part of the book, in the stories about the mothers, but I could not relate to the daughters at all. They were spoiled, judgmental, competitive and gossipy. I considered that the issue might be the generation of the daughters but I don't think that's the issue. 

I have to think it's this book. I grew up reading authors like Margaret Atwood and Milan Kundera. I've never had such a strong feeling of not relating to a book on a generational level before. 

At the back of my mind though, I wonder if I wouldn't have related to this more if I'd read it back in the 90s when I saw it on my aunt's bookshelf and when the film was all the rage. 

I'm currently reading Margaret Atwood's <em>Cat's Eye</em> for the first time in decades, so watch this space to see if I just can't relate to late modern literature* on the same level as I did 30 years ago. 

*and by this I mean literature written between 1960 and 1995