 "Wonderful Book" | 2008-07-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A10E3F50DIUJEE |
Although there are hundreds of reviews, I had to review this book because it had such an impact on me. I think this book is wonderful. It is a captivating story. I read it complete in one night, I just could not put it down!
Adeline is a beautiful story teller, with an exceptional eye for detail. Although I loved the book, there was a strange voice that would creep into the story. Almost as if there was a repressed part of herself that could not hide from this book: it is a young Adeline still hoping to be the apple of her father's eye; and for her family to appreciate, love and respect her.
It is a sad story that shocks readers with the inhumanity that families can inflict on one of their own. It is still beautiful and hopeful, even in its most miserable moments.
Highly recommend
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| "A memorable story that haunts you long after reading." | 2008-05-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3K9M8T3TPA225 |
This book was beautifully written and gripping from the start. The reviewer who complained of Adeline's "whining" tone, is being unfair. I don't see her as whiny, but rather somewhat detached as she recounts the emptiness of her childhood. In fact, I want her to scream and kick and rebell, maybe even whine, yet she does none of that. Whining is even more emotion than I think she allows herself to feel. She endured a childhood with certain material wealth but vastly lacking in emotional wealth.
Adeline takes the emotional abuse because she knows nothing else. Her father is the true villain for caring more about his trophy wife than his own family's happiness. He is oblivious to his children's emotional needs. He disappoints more than the stepmom for choosing to abandon children that he chose to bring into the world. He manipulates and plays them one against the other for his own selfish desires.
After long periods of thinking about this book, I've come to my own understanding of why she managed to salvage a happy life out of such a miserable upbringing. It is the very belief, albeit blatently false, that her family would one day accept her, that makes her continue to push for their love and not give up. Children are frequently unable to find fault with their loved ones. It is that very "innocence" that protected her from worse harm, the knowledge that acceptance would never, ever, be forthcoming. |
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| "Falling Leaves- FANTASTIC read!" | 2008-04-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2X4WJ4DA5DITG |
| The heartbreaking story of an unwanted, abused, neglected child who never ceases to try and earn her family's affections. If you have ever experienced these feelings,no matter what your race, you will LOVE this book. It moved me to tears and I could not put it down once I started reading it. |
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| "Doing the right thing is priceless" | 2008-03-30 |
| - Reviewed By trevaa |
| Adeline Yen Mah, the youngest daughter of a prominent chinese businessman and his young half-chinese, half-french new wife, shows a poignant and vivid picture of life as a most unwanted Chinese daughter growing up during the cultural revolution in mid- 20th century China. Despite horrible mistreatment and abuse by her step-mother, Yen Mah slowly flourished from a sad, quiet girl to a successful physician living in the United States because of the love and encourgement of one unempowered Aunt. A heartwrenching read, this autobiography is proof that even when 'bad things happen to good people', knowing one has done the 'right thing' is priceless indeed. |
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| "good and sad" | 2008-01-07 |
| - Reviewed By themercury7 |
| this book is well written, and didn't take me too long to get through. mah retells her fascinating story, and includes descriptions of the events in China at that time (the Communist take-over). it is a sad story of family relations gone bad as she tries desperately for her family to come together. |
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| "Loved IT!" | 2007-12-16 |
| - Reviewed By scrapizzazz |
| I thoroughly enjoyed this book about Adeline and her life. I read The Concubine's Children right before this book and this book is written far better. I couldn't wait to have a moment to read what was going to happen next. It's a great insight into Chinese culture and highly recommended for all to read, especially women. I will keep this book so my daughter can read it when she is older. |
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| "Yen Mah's Tramatic Tale" | 2007-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By ashalink |
Adeline Yen Mah's unforgettable soul-baring memoir, Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter compels the reader to pity and suffer in the author's anguish as Mah writes about her daunting past. Not only did she have to deal with the hardships that Chinese women faced at the time, but she also had to cope with the fact that her real mother died giving birth to her, which is considered to be very bad luck in China. Mah was left with an unquestionably evil stepmother called Niang, a very strict father, and siblings that don't care about her. Somehow, Mah manages to overcome the trauma she endured from her family to write this heart-wrenching tale of a daughter's quest to find love, happiness, and success. This story is one of many chilling accounts by different women of being an unwanted Chinese daughter and reflects far larger problems that the country had and is still dealing with today.
Being an unwanted Chinese daughter didn't make Mah's childhood any easier. Although she doesn't write a lot about the hardships of being a woman in China, a few excerpts are found though out the book. "Girls were a cheap commodity in China," Mah explains, "Unwanted daughters were peddled as virtual slaves, sometimes by brokers, to unknown families." Once the child was sold, her destiny was "at the whim of her buyer." These girls would have no rights, although some became legally adopted while some were beaten and abused, forced into prostitution, and even death reached some of them. All throughout her life, Mah lived in fear that she too would be married off, sold, or simply given up to an orphanage. "I knew that I was the least-loved child because I was a girl and because my mother had died giving birth to me," she explains, "Nothing I did ever seemed to please my Father, Niang or any of my siblings. But I never ceased to believe that if I tried hard enough, one day Father, Niang and everyone in my family would be proud of me." Unfortunately this optimism didn't work out.
Mah's family was far from loving and anything but normal. She was the youngest of five children until her father re-married an extremely beautiful French-Chinese 17-year-old who the children called Niang. Niang went on to have two children herself, who she spoiled immensely. Adeline Yen Mah was born with the name Jung-ling but Niang decided to rename the previous five children all with European names. Mah, who was just a first-grader, stood up against her stepmother one day because she was beating her infant daughter, in which Niang replied, "I shall never forget or forgive your insolence! Never! Never! Never!" Unfortunately for Mah, Niang kept true to her word. She spent most of her childhood in isolation, as she was sent away to boarding schools, and was the subject of mental tortures and physical abuse brought on by Niang and sometimes her own siblings.
School was the only thing Mah had to "lose" herself, forget her fears, and momentarily escape her depressing life. In one chapter, Mah writes, "...I became more and more determined not to give in, no matter how cruel the torture. Defenseless and armed with nothing but my resolve, I knew only that I had do it this way while hoping that Niang would posses no weapon powerful enough to vanquish me." This determination is what helps keep Mah from being a depressed, self-loathing, or even suicidal person. She is extremely strong-hearted and courageous as she faced the evils of Niang and her family. Events in Mah's life turned for the best, when she entered into an international English-speaking playwriting competition, and won. Her father was proud of her for once in her life and he allowed her to go to England to study just like her older brothers. If it weren't for her winning the competition, Mah would have been married off just like her older sister. Although she dreamed of becoming a writer, Mah's father forced her to become a doctor in obstetrics, which she went on to become. She always did what her father wanted because more than anyone else in the family, she was always searching for his love and acceptance the most.
Although Mah never really gained acceptance from her father, stepmother, and siblings, she came to find her love, happiness, and success in the end. Her memoir provided a way to help bring closure to a lot of disturbing issues she had to deal with growing up. This is a truly amazing story of one girl's instinct to survive and triumph over the challenges life threw at her. She was an undesired Chinese girl during her childhood, but she has grown and overcome that sad truth and now has everything that she dreamed of. Although this was a great success story, the reality for millions of unwanted Chinese women is that their dreams of being wanted may never come true.
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 "Hard lessons, painfully learned" | 2007-10-29 |
| - Reviewed By mhholzmann |
This book is in our house because my daughter's reading group at school selected it. I was fascinated by the depiction of China undergoing huge changes and the snapshots the author provides of Shanghai, London, the US and the prejudice she encountered because she was lowest ranking because of the sin of being female, and Chinese in a white, male-dominated profession.
The book is easy to read and hard to put down. As a mother of a blended family, I know about the tensions that seem to naturally exist between those in the first and second families. It is not surprising that the children all turned against each other when the step-mother was using every device in her command to fuel their mutual hatred and jealousy.
I expected the book to end when Adeline finally gains her freedom by leaving Hong Kong to pursue studies in England. That was her opportunity to break from her despotic parents. But then this is not a fictional work, it is a story of a real person, and real people do not exercise good judgement the first time around, or the second or the ninth time, as we learn in this book. Like others who read the book, I thought that Adeline's unhappiness was caused by the inequal division of parental favors and love among her siblings and not because she was deprived in an absolute way. She was educated way beyond what any Chinese girl could expect in those times and all at the expense of her parents.
Since I know people who, like the author, can recount a lifetime of mistreatment at the hands of others, and who never take any responsibility for causing the mess their lives are in, I am left wondering (and that is a good affect for a book to have...) if the author is also afflicted by this tendency to blame ones own failures and unhappiness a bit too much on others. |
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| "The Plight Of An Unloved Child" | 2007-10-11 |
| - Reviewed By dsternh |
Although this book was difficult at times to read, the author did keep me fascinated with her story. She has an ease of writing that very much feels as if she is having a conversation with the reader, and the book just flows.
The story is one that is ageless: a man marries a woman and they have several children (in this case 5). When the youngest is born, the woman dies from complications, and the man in his loneliness quickly finds another woman to marry. He concerns himself more with outward appearances than with character, and ends up with wife #2 who is controlling, domineering, and wishes she had been wife #1 instead of wife #2. She really doesn't care for the fact that her husband has 5 children from wife #1, but no matter. Since her husband is weak and does as she wishes, she can treat them as she likes. Which isn't pleasant.
Adeline is the youngest of the 5 siblings and therefore the recipient of not only her stepmother's wrath, but most often her 4 siblings as well. Unlike some children, Adeline never seems to truly stand up for herself, and that might be her personality or it might be cultural. Whatever it is, it defines her.
Some reviewers here think Adeline is "whiny", especially after she reaches adulthood. Perhaps. However, if anyone knows somebody who was treated as though they were unwanted and/or unloved as a child - and my mother was such a one - then they might very well see the same behavior Adeline portrays as an adult.
I thought this book was fascinating and a terrific tale of the healing power of the human spirit. At times I just wished I could have reached through the pages of this book and snatched Adeline away to a safe place where she could be nutured and feel safe. |
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| "Read it entirely in one night" | 2007-09-05 |
| - Reviewed By betty77 |
I found this book while browsing the library and borrowed it. I thought it would be good reading material for my daily subway rides since the book wasn't too long at all.
I had a quiet evening, so I started reading. Page by page I turned and when I finished the book it was 1am in the morning. It was definitely a page turner. The reader is kept on their toes to find out what comes next.
I was truly touch by Adeline's story and there were a couple of tear-jerking scenes. This book reminds me a lot of the 1st Harry Potter book somehow. Both tell the story of a rejected child living with sinister relatives.
Adeline's story is different from many other books in that she was a rejected child from a rich family that could have given her everything. Many memoiors tell of a very poor childhood, so I really liked that this was different. She was pretty much poor in a rich family.
I was full of rage when I found out Lydia was backstabbing her & how her brothers are still jerks as adults. Inheritance issues always bring out the nastiest in people. Ultra-rich families do not usually fare well & are usually the subject of drama serial TV in Hong Kong.
Lydia can just shove it...she is just about as dragonlady as Niang for what she did.
Edgar...gosh I wonder if he made a good doctor at all.
James...he's such a timid turtle & it got annoying to see him still like that as a grown adult.
Susan...she married into an ultra-rich family and didn't even care for the inheritance. I was happy for her as she was able to let go of her family.
Adeline...I wish she would stop being the nice person all the time. It was so unfair to her to be taken advantage of even as an adult (Lydia two-timing her while Adeline was willing to help Lydia's song, putting up with 1st abusive husband, still scared of Niang as an adult).
I really wish she had the courage to cut her family off and carve her own happiness with her own family (husband and 2 sons and future grandchildren). I really hope that Adeline is able to/or has already done so. I hope she is having a much happier life right now :)
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