The Kitchen God's Wife - Softcover

Tan, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143038109 ISBN 13: 9780143038108

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2006

Synopsis

"Remarkable...mesmerizing...compelling.... An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail....Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you." --The New York Times Book Review

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949. The Kitchen God's Wife is "a beautiful book" (Los Angeles Times) from the author of bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement, and the new memoir, Where the Past Begins.

About this title

Review:

"A beautiful book...what fascinates in The Kitchen God's Wife is not only the insistent storytelling but the details of Chinese life and tradition; not only how people lived but how their sensibility shines through, most notably in their speech. Amy Tan has a command with language in which event and concrete perception jump into palpable metaphor, and images from the daily world act like spiritual agents." --Los Angeles Times

"Remarkable...mesmerizing...compelling.... An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail....Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you." --The New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover:

Pearl Louie Brandt has a terrible secret which she tries desperately to keep from her mother, Winnie Louie. And Winnie has long kept her own secrets – about her past and the confusing circumstances of Pearl's birth. Fate intervenes in the form of Helen Kwong, Winnie's so-called sister-in-law, who believes she is dying and must unburden herself of all falsehoods before she flies off to heaven. But, unfortunately, the truth comes in many guises, depending on who is telling the tale...

Thus begins a story that takes us back to Shanghai in the 1920s, through World War II, and the harrowing events that lead to Winnie's arrival in America in 1949. The story is one of innocence and its loss, tragedy and survival and, most of all, the enduring qualities of hope, love and friendship. Tan's voice – her vivid characterization, her sly and poignant humour, and her sympathetic insights into human relationships – gives us a compelling novel, both painful and sweet, suffused with hopes universal to us all.

"Tan is a consummate storyteller whose prose manages to be emotionally charged without a trace of sentimentality."
SUNDAY TIMES

"In this remarkable book Tan manages to illuminate the nobility of friendship and the necessity of humor. Give yourself over to the world she creates."
NEW YORK TIMES

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0143038109
• ISBN 13: 9780143038108
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416