A beautifully written, compelling, highly emotive series of linked stories that follow four Chinese mothers and their daughters, focusing on the differences and similarities present in navigating life as first and second generation immigrants, identity and the various shapes of maternal love. Though there are darker elements of the Chinese-American experience that have been overlooked (a criticism that seems to have been regularly levelled at Amy Tan across her novels), it otherwise really doesn’t show its 30 years. I loved it.