![]() ![]() Nothing about Kwan is American from her accent to her belief that she has yin eyes to see “those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.” At the age of eighteen, Kwan entered the lives of Olivia (then four) and her family from her native China. She comes from a “traditional American family.” At least for the most part. Olivia’s mother is American, her father Chinese. ![]() I also happened to think this novel was the markedly better of the two. ![]() Obviously, I can’t speak for The Joy Luck Club but I did read The Kitchen God’s Wife which had a similar theme but in my view an entirely different plot. While on the subject of this novel’s freshness, it bears mention that some reviewers suggested The Hundred Secret Senses was little more than a rehash of previous, very similar, plots from her earlier books. ![]() However, that wasn’t the case with this book because it was so enjoyable and rich that rereading felt more like visiting old friends than rehashing something I already knew. I almost never do that because the second reading just feels boring. I did, however, read The Hundred Secret Senses (1996) not once but twice. While Amy Tan is an amazingly talented writer with a lot of great books under her belt, she is arguably most well known as the author of The Joy Luck Club, which I have yet to read. ![]()
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