The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

Amy Tan's first novel tells the stories of four mothers who left China towards the end of the 1940s to live in San Francisco, and each of their four American-born daughters. The mothers talk of their lives in China,  their strict upbringing, arranged and failed marriages, and their journeys to the US. The daughters tell of their own difficult childhoods, growing up in California but with Chinese norms at home, and their struggles to live to up to their mothers' expectations.

Each story gives a wonderful glimpse into Chinese culture and heritage including festivals, marriage ceremonies, food dishes, clothing, and raising children. They got me thinking...do we have as many rich traditions in the West? Apart from religion-based celebrations (first communion, Easter, Christmas, etc.) I can't think of too many traditions that are handed down through generations. (Please feel free to comment and disagree if I'm missing something.)

The Joy Luck Club was a quick and easy read and, if you enjoy reading about different cultures, I would highly recommend it.

Two Lives, Vikram Seth

Probably my favourite book of all time is 'An Equal Music' by Vikram Seth. I say 'probably' as it's around ten years since I read it, and I'm nervous to go back and re-read it in case it doesn't blow me away the way it did the first time. 

The same beautiful writing and deep research are evident in this 2005 account of the lives of his Great Uncle and Aunt. It’s described on the dust jacket as part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times - and that sums it up perfectly. Shanti Seth, the brother of Vikram’s grandfather, was raised in India and moved to Berlin in the 1930s to study dentistry. It was here that he first met Henny Caro, the daughter of his landlady in Berlin. The mix of her Jewish-German upbringing and his Hindi roots makes for a fascinating contrast.

The book then follows their lives throughout the turbulence of the twentieth century - the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany; the war that took Shanti to North Africa, the Middle East and Italy; the Holocaust; and eventually post-war Britain, where they married in 1951 and lived out the rest of their lives.

The characters of Henny and Shanti are vividly brought to life through her letters to friends back in Germany and his words from interviews with the author. Theirs was a different kind of love story, heavily impacted by the traumas suffered by both during the war and the differences in their upbringing.

Reading ‘Two Lives’ certainly made me realise how little I know about the holocaust. The thing is about great books like this one, is that they just make me want to read more books. That's got to be a good thing though, right?