Tan plumbs the depths of issues like life and death, reincarnation, history, soul ties, relationships and culture in this story, and I ate it up. The ending is extremely poignant without being cheesy or unrealistic. Olivia struggles her whole life to ignore and dismiss Kwan's superstitions until her marriage is crumbling and she, her estranged husband and her sister find themselves on a trip to China together. Enter Kwan, Olivia's older half-sister who believes that she has 'yin eyes' and can see and speak to ghosts. When her father is on his deathbed, he reveals to his wife that he left behind a daughter in China, and asks her to retrieve the daughter. Olivia, the narrator, is the American-born daughter of a Chinese man and an American woman. Yes, I love The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife and Saving Fish From Drowning - I love any Tan story I come across - but The Hundred Secret Senses (along with TBD) really stand out. The Hundred Secret Senses is now one of my favorite Amy Tan novels, rivaled only by The Bonesetter's Daughter. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot on encouraging children to write.Ĭurrently, she is the literary editor for West, Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine. In addition, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS.

Her most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning, explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma. She has written several other books, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetter's Daughter, and a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her most popular fiction work, The Joy Luck Club, became a commercially successful film. Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美 pinyin: Tán Ēnměi born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and what it means to grow up as a first generation Asian American.

The hundred secret senses review