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    Rules for Virgins: Wherein Magic Gourd Advises Young Violet on How to Become a Popular Courtesan While Avoiding Cheapskates, False Love, and Suicide
    Rules for Virgins: Wherein Magic Gourd Advises Young Violet on How to Become a Popular Courtesan While Avoiding Cheapskates, False Love, and Suicide
    Rules for Virgins: Wherein Magic Gourd Advises Young Violet on How to Become a Popular Courtesan While Avoiding Cheapskates, False Love, and Suicide
    Audiobook1 hour

    Rules for Virgins: Wherein Magic Gourd Advises Young Violet on How to Become a Popular Courtesan While Avoiding Cheapskates, False Love, and Suicide

    Written by Amy Tan

    Narrated by Nancy Wu

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In her startlingly sensual story, "Rules for Virgins"—this jewel of a tale is the first fiction she has published in six years—beloved bestselling author Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter's Daughter) takes us deep into the illicit world of 1912 Shanghai, where beautiful courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. For the women, the contest is deadly serious, a perilous game of economic survival that, if played well, can set them up for life as mistresses of the rich and prominent. There is no room for error, however: erotic power is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially in the loftiest social circles.

    Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, formerly one of Shanghai's "Top Ten Beauties" and now the advisor and attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan. Violet may have the youth and the allure, but Magic Gourd has the cunning and the knowledge without which the younger woman is sure to fail. These ancient tricks of the trade aren't written down, though; to pass them on to her student, Magic Gourd must reach back into her own professional past, bringing her lessons alive with stories and anecdotes from a career spent charming and manipulating men who should have known better but rarely did.

    The world of sexual intrigue that Tan reveals in Rules for Virgins" actually existed once, and she spares no detail in recreating it. But this story is more than intriguing (and sometimes shocking) historical literary fiction. Besides inviting us inside a life that few writers but Tan could conjure up, the intimate confessions of Magic Gourd add up to a kind of military manual for the War of the Sexes' female combatants. The wisdom conveyed is ancient, specific, and timeless, exposing the workings of vanity and folly, calculation and desire that define the mysterious human heart.

    * * *
    Amy Tan is the author of the bestselling novels The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning as well as The Opposite of Fate, a memoir. Her novel is The Valley of Amazement" (Ecco, 2013).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 24, 2012
    ISBN9781455897193
    Rules for Virgins: Wherein Magic Gourd Advises Young Violet on How to Become a Popular Courtesan While Avoiding Cheapskates, False Love, and Suicide
    Author

    Amy Tan

    Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Saving Fish from Drowning, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which was adapted into a PBS television series. Tan was also a coproducer and coscreenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.

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    Reviews for Rules for Virgins

    4/5

    66 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I don’t know what I was expecting but I enjoyed the book. The author’s addition for he beginning about how she discovered a family secret and the way the story was created gave it a special connection and relevance
    • 4/5
      Amy Tan is a fabulous storyteller and the narrator did an excellent job in creating the 'mood' of Amy's story. This reminded me a lot of 'Memoirs of a Geisha'...the rules of the culture and society these women were subject to, and the lesson that their bodies were no longer their own but that they did have some control over who they allowed to court them. I also enjoyed Amy's opening remarks about the story and the research she did to make it as accurate as possible; it's always nice to hear her personally describe her process. Short enough to enjoy in a day, but compelling enough to keep it on hand for another listen.
    • 2/5
      After a much anticipated wait for new material from Amy Tan, I was sadly disappointed by the brevity and lack of substance in this book. A seasoned courtesan gives advice to a young virgin on the tricks of the trade. With little story and an abrupt ending, my time could have been much better spent.
    • 3/5
      As an excerpt (or teaser, if you will) of her next novel, this was fine. I'm sure I'll read Valley of Amazement.As a standalone work (which is what I had thought this was as I read it), it fell flat. There was no character development, and it could've fit right into Memoirs of a Geisha, something I found surprising considering this took place in Shanghai rather than Kyoto, Japan. I finished wanting more and being disappointed in the first Amy Tan book in six years.I shouldn't say "no character development." There's a little. You get to know a bit about the narrator and her life as a former courtesan through hints she drops and the anecdotes she shares. Those were the best parts, and I intend to read Valley of Amazement to get more of her story.
    • 4/5
      Rules for Virgins is presented as a monologue as an experienced (so old in her 30s!) courtesan trains a seventeen-year-old in turn-of-the-century Shanghai. Through her instruction, Magic Gourd reveals a world of jealousy, deceit, and competition, but also pride, eloquence, and synergy. Similar to Memoirs of a Geisha, but with more character, Rules for Virgins is an intriguing narrative.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting look at how courtesans were trained in 1912 Shanghai. Looking forward to reading Amy Tan's upcoming book, The Valley of Amazement, from which this excerpt was adapted.