{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5134",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5134,
    "subject": "Amy Tan = Gene Wolfe revealed, pt 2",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2008-08-22T07:58:48+00:00",
    "last": "2008-08-22T07:58:48+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<48AE71B8.3010907@io.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jeff Wilson",
        "address": "jwilson at io.com"
      },
      "date": "2008-08-22T07:58:48+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Amy Tan = Gene Wolfe revealed, pt 2",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Just finished _The Hundred Secret Senses_ by Amy Tan. Another intricate \nnovel-length story  consisting of many internested and interconnected \nshorter stories, it again features a Western-raised female narrator with \na close but difficult relationship to an Eastern-raised female immediate \nfamily member, like _The Bonesetter's Daughter_.\n\nThis time it is the half-Chinese Olivia who narrates her life with her \ndecade-plus older half-sister Kwan, brought to America after their \nfather deathbed revelation of his previous family left behind in China. \nKwan is a surrogate mother to the neglected Olivia, who learns Mandarin \nfrom Kwan's incessant tale-spinning of past lives and \"Yin people\" only \nshe can see. This device again provides an unequaled view into the Asian \ncultural mindset, especially when the outer action moves to Kwan's home \nvillage of Changmian later in their lives.\n\nThe inner action is again very much like one of GW's fantastic stories, \nwith Olivia taking the place of the not-entirely-obliging reader as she \nconstantly struggles with the ambiguities both of idiomatic Mandarin and \n  the possibly unreliable narrator Kwan who wanders afield into ghosts, \nreincarnation, body-hopping, time travel, war, religion, mercenaries, \nmissionaries, prostitution, exploitative relationships, even some \npeculiar Taoist alchemy involving five apparent cloned creatures that \nmake me wonder if there isn't a direct Wolfe influence on the book.\n\nNintey-five percent of the mysteries are wrapped up by the end of the \nbook without doing disservice to eastern or western cultures, and \nhopefully it's not a spoiler to say this isn't nearly the weeper that \n_Daughter_ was, but still has four or five real tear-jerker moments.\nRecommended for those who enjoy GW stories, but hate not finding out \nwhat's really going on."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com\n< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}