In her assessment of The Joy Luck Club, which she calls a "stunningly devotional tour de force, " American fiction and nonfiction writer Carolyn See determines that the novel "is about the way the past distances itself away from the present." Its protagonists, See notes, are looking for their pasts- the older women for the pasts they have lost, the younger starving "for a past they can never fully understand. "

The only negative thing I could ever say about this book is that I'll never again be able to read it for the first time. The Joy Luck Club is so powerful, so full of magic, that by the end of the second paragraph, your heart catches; by the end of the first page, tears blur your vision, and one-third of the way down on Page 26, you know you won't be doing anything of importance until you have...