Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 1991
415 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
With the same narrative skills and evocative powers that made her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, a national bestseller, Tan now tells the story of Winnie Louie, an aging Chinese woman unfolding a life's worth of secrets to her suspicious, Americanized daughter.
"Tan can relax. If The Joy Luck Club was an astonishing literary debut, The Kitchen God's Wife is a triumph, a solid indication of a mature talent for magically involving storytelling, beguiling use of language and deeply textured and nuanced character development." - Publishers Weekly.
"Tan is a gifted natural storyteller. The rhythms of Winnie's story are spellbinding and true, without the contrivance common in many modern novels. Highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"Some YAs may find the beginning a bit slow, but this beautifully written, heartrending, sometimes violent story with strong characterization will captivate their interest to the very last page." - School Library Journal.
"The results ... are mixed, entertaining in many respects but also cliched and predictable ... what is most appealing about Ms. Tan's story is the humor and quirkiness of her characters ... Amy Tan can probably do better. One hopes that she soon will." - The New York Times.
This information about The Kitchen God's Wife was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan failed her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She settled on writing fiction. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and Saving Fish From Drowning, all New York Times bestsellers and the recipients of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, and numerous articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, and National Geographic.
Tan has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagiellonian, Beijing, and Georgetown, both in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar. Tan also served as the Literary Editor for the ...
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