| In late 2000, The New Yorker published “Immortal Heart,” an unforgettable excerpt from “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” Amy Tan’s first book in half a decade. Like “The Joy Luck Club,” Tan’s most famous novel, the new story centered on love and conflict across generations—unfolding, in this case, in a small Chinese town bordered by an ominous ravine. The narrator, Lu Ling, shares a room and much of her time with Precious Auntie, a nursemaid who became mute after a long-ago tragedy. Their family draws its livelihood partly from “dragon bones,” which they extract from a secret cave and sell as an ingredient in medical remedies. Fans of Tan will recognize certain rich motifs and plot points: arranged marriages at odds with romantic desire; ancestors who communicate through dreams and signs from the gods; winking humor at class strictures and social hypocrisy. (After an “accidental meeting” with the mother of a prospective husband, Lu Ling takes a moment to recover from her “fake surprise.”) Lo and behold, the dragon bones turn out not to be from dragons; less predictably, Precious Auntie isn’t who the narrator believed, either. The plot is captivating, and so is the manner in which it is told. “You speak the language of shooting stars,” an earnest young man writes in a poem to his would-be bride. Tan writes in it, too. | 
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