Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: review

It's only when Chua's Chinese parenting ideal, and with it her conviction, starts to crumble that this memoir gets truly interesting. Her younger teenage daughter becomes depressed, a gloomy 'No' her only rejoinder. One night she hacks off her lovely hair, just on the one side. No longer under her mother's wing, she has become separate, critical, and subject to self-doubt. On top of this, one of Chua's sisters falls gravely ill. For the first time Amy Chua is forced to entertain doubt and uncertainty. The precariousness of life touches her too.

But not for long, her indominitable spirit soon reviving. After all the fuss with Lulu, her elder daughter Sophie feels left out. 'You're just like I was in my family', Amy tells her, 'the oldest, the one that everyone counts on and no one has to worry about. It's an honour to play that role. The problem is that Western culture doesn't see it that way. In Disney movies the "good daughter" always has to have a breakdown and realize that life is not all about following rules and winning prizes, and then take off her clothes and run into the ocean, or something like that. But that's just Disney's way of appealing to all the people who never win any prizes. Winning prizes gives you opportunities, and that's freedom – not running into the ocean.'

Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln would nod their heads in agreement with much of Chua's motherly advice. You can do anything, Chua urges, if you work hard enough. A foreign accent is a sign of bravery, not a prompt for mockery. You too can make the grade, if only you revise hard enough.

By the end of her memoir I found myself liking Amy Chua, less for her opinions than for her courage, her balls even. There's a charming frankness about her tone that is very appealing. Because she doesn't care a bit if the reader hates her, her text has a freedom and freshness which is missing from more guarded memoirs.

Yes, she received a big publishing advance, and probably had a lot of domestic support while writing the book. Nonetheless Amy Chua shows remarkable honesty about an experience that many of us remain cagey about, especially the teenage years.

Towards the end of her memoir Chua regains her footing. She believes in herself once more, is proud of what's she done, and would do it all again, with only a few revisions. But above all her book has got people talking about a tired subject in a new and interesting way - which must be a good thing.