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Review
'An exciting, funny and thought-provoking story…a masterful novel.' The Telegraph
'One can only admire Amy Tan for striking out into unchartered artistic lands.' Sarah Churchwell, Times Literary Supplement
'Sparkling…a very funny book.' Metro
'Tan’s compelling portrait of a drowning humanity, pain seeks us out in our hiding places, however far we would run.' Anita Sethi, Observer
Praise for ‘The Kitchen God’s Wife’:
‘In this remarkable book Tan manages to illuminate the nobility of friendship and the necessity of humour. Give yourself over to the world she creates.’ New York Times
‘Once again this wonderful novel has extended experience. There is something dizzyingly elemental about Tan’s storytelling; it melds the rich simplicities of fairytales with a delicate lyrical style.’ Sunday Times
‘Tan is a prodigal with her talent. She weaves a dazzling web of unfamiliar colours, smells, tastes and landscapes.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Amy Tan writes with passion and humour, making East and West mutually more comprehensible.’ Daily Mail
Praise for ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’:
‘Compelling…exotic lands and the past lend themselves to poetry. Tan turns the familiar but harrowing accounts of pre-Communist Chinese women into a romantic and intriguing tale. LuLing is a classic Tan character, a resilient survivor who, like Olivia in “The Hundred Secret Senses”, betrays someone close to her with dire consequences.' Times Literary Supplement
'A classic [told with] originality and humourt…this is a delicious page-turner that keeps you guessing, laughing and crying until the end.' Sunday Express
The Sunday Times
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Customer Reviews
But if you like novels rich in cultural and psychological irony, you've found a gem. I emphasize that point because irony is something that many readers avoid or don't enjoy very much. I find that there are too few well-written ironic novels, and I treasure all those that I find.
Like most stories about ironies, this one takes on such a broad theme that it can be easy to miss the message: Unintended consequences cause your purest impulses to backfire on you and on those you want to help. Ms. Tan's choice of a title gives a broad clue, in referring to an anonymous tale about a pious man who "saves" the lives of fish from drowning by catching them. When the fish die, he's disappointed but realizing that one must never waste anything, he sells the dead fishes to buy more nets . . . so he can save more fish from drowning.
Like a good symphony composer, Ms. Tan then endows her major characters with story lines that let them each play out that theme in their own variations. To make sure we get the point, each personal story is imbued with ironies that are both richly developed and humorous.
To be sure we understand that there are other forces at work, Ms. Tan sets as her initial narrator a wealthy patron of the arts who has just died . . . but is still lingering around to observe her own funeral . . . and the actions of the tour group she had organized. Although other such "friendly" spirits do not narrate, we can enjoy their visitations to the living throughout the novel.
One of the beauties of the book is that Ms. Tan takes us into the cultural realities of those from many different nations and backgrounds. Those contrasts make it more obvious how much of what we do is the result of our histories, family circumstances and education.
Enjoy a great read!
It's also interesting to explore the idea that tourism is both necessary and detrimental to the countries visited. And the insensibility of the tourists to the fact that the funny foreigners were real people too, with real hopes and fears and beliefs, made me cringe with guilty recognition.
But I'm not sure why there were so many characters - far too many for them to be easily distinguishable. And the framing story of the narrator's death was silly - rich in symbolism, I'm sure, but it seemed unnecessary. And there was at least one loose end not tied up.
Part comedy, part thriller, part detective book... it is unputdownable as you want to know what happened to each of them.... Very entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.
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