"The apartment is perhaps not as pristine as you were expecting."
Good thing I wasn't expecting pristine at all. When would he and Orca have possibly found time to clean or, you know, unpack, with all the XBox playing??
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| The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan |
After my years and years of reading Ghost Wars, I wanted a purely fictional story that I could get lost in. Amy Tan is good for that (go read The Joy Luck Club immediately). As a testament to her writing power, let me just say that as I traveled over the last week, I hardly even looked up as the plane took off and landed. I won't even tell you what a miracle that is. At night in the hotel room, I would fall into bed, thinking I was moments from sleep (heck, I live my life mere moments away from sleep), but I would lay there and read for hours.
The story starts with a Chinese-American woman (Pearl) struggling with whether or not to tell her aging mother that she (the daughter) has been diagnosed with MS. She assumes her mother would not handle the news well, and decides to keep it a secret and not bother her with it. Until her old Chinese auntie threatens to break the news if she doesn't handle it herself. And she mentions something about Pearl's mother being no stranger to secrets...
Then the mother begins to narrate, guiding us back to her life in China as a child in the 1940's, struggling under Japan's attacks and impending oppression. She was born into one of the richest families in the area, and was later abandoned by her mother and forced to deal with the shame and low-level that brought upon her within the family. A few years passed and she was able to "escape" the family via a marriage arrangement that ended up trapping her in an abusive marriage for years. The marriage, though, took her around China during the war and introduced her to some key characters within the story. Trust me, you will find yourself transported to China. You will find yourself frantic about what is going to happen next.
Tan builds suspense very well and her dialogue is superb. I used to work with an older Chinese lady and Tan aptly portrays the mixture of bossiness, hard-headedness, shrewdness, and outright hilarity that can exist within one person all in a sentence or two.
I have so enjoyed my transition back to fiction that I just may never read non-fiction again.
Enjoy!
I want to read this! I have a friend here who is really into -- is it ok if i call it Asian historical fiction? The title escapes me now but I borrowed and read a book from her about two chinese sisters who escaped during WWII and made it to San Francisco. It wasn't a terrific book, but the cultural aspects were fascinating. As a side-note, I think it interests me more than it would other-wise because of living in Hawaii and being introduced to Asian culture.
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