Monday, June 13, 2011

The hundred secret senses, by Amy Tan

This 1995 novel is less satisfying than both Tan’s earlier books, particularly the justifiably loved Joy Luck Club. Olivia is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant and Caucasian American. As the father lies dying at a relatively young age, he reveals that he has left an older Chinese daughter behind and charges his wife with finding and bringing the 18-year-old village girl to join his American family. Olivia, but four at his death, eagerly anticipates the arrival of this older sister, but the reality is not what she expected. Kwan is odd; has “yin” eyes and can see and converse with the dead; and, never mastering her new language, calls Olivia “Libby-ah.” Kwan is an embarrassment to Olivia as she grows older, but her stories, involving conversations with the dead, continue to fascinate the younger girl. The book opens with Olivia newly separated from her husband of 18 years, a Hawaiian man who is also mixed-race. But Kwan, with her secret senses, knows somehow that they are still destined to be together because of a tie to the past in China. Alternating between Chinese village life in the mid-1990s and tales from Kwan’s earlier life in Manchu China as the “loyal friend” to an American missionary, these connections are revealed when Kwan, Olivia, and her husband Simon travel together to China. 358 pp.

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