“When I was seven, I knew exactly who I was: a thoroughly American girl in race, manners, and speech, whose mother, Lulu Minturn, was the only white woman who owned a first-class courtesan house in Shanghai.”

This is the first sentence of celebrated author Amy Tan’s most recent novel, The Valley of Amazement. And my goodness, what a beginning.

The Valley of Amazement focuses on the story of Violent Minturn, the daughter of the American madame of one of the most famed courtesan houses in Shanghai during the early twentieth century. Violet grows up surrounded by the beauties and parties of courtesan house life, but at age fourteen, a cruel plot lands her in the role of virgin courtesan at another house, as her mother sails off to San Francisco. As Tan tells the story of Violet and her life–spanning years upon years, through adolescence into adulthood–she also invites the reader to hear the stories of many other characters, immersing them in a world that grows harder to escape with every turn of the page.

The Valley of Amazement is both incredibly detailed and expansive, and it drew me in so fully that it felt physically difficult to put down at times. Every character is so real as to have actually existed–Violet’s mother, her mentor and companion Magic Gourd, the suitors she encounters. Violet herself is filled with emotions; anger, yearning, love. Watching the ways she changes and grows throughout the book is one of the best things about it, and the other characters are no less developed. Tan invites the reader to see Violet’s mother’s story as well, and shares many others throughout the course of the book. By the end I felt as if the characters had actually existed, and as if I couldn’t quite move on from the book without knowing what else had happened to them. The characters are one of the things that truly drew me in, and they made The Valley of Amazement so absorbing that it was tempting to just read it for hours on end.

However, Tan also masterfully draws the reader in through the setting, taking the story from Shanghai to the Chinese countryside to San Francisco and back again. She makes these places so real that it felt as if I could actually see them, and it’s not too hard to find oneself getting lost in Violet’s world. She incorporates her descriptions of the setting and historical context in a way that never feels awkward or out of place.

The Valley of Amazement is the kind of book that I just couldn’t get enough of. It’s amazing to watch as Violet’s circumstances change again and again–the people she encounters, the things she does, the development she undergoes as a young girl, a young adult, a mother. Even though the book is 589 pages long, I was still left hoping for more, and after I finished it I felt as if I had to simply absorb it for awhile, or maybe just pick it up and read it all over again.

Some parts are very difficult to get through. Violet’s life is by no means easy or simple, and Tan never holds back or sugarcoats. But it only makes the book more impressive and captivating, and I can’t wait to explore Tan’s other novels. The only difficulty will be deciding which one to read first.