The Hundred Secret Senses: A Novel - Softcover

Tan, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143119087 ISBN 13: 9780143119081

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2010

Synopsis

The "wisest and most captivating novel" (Boston Globe) from the author of the bestselling The Valley of Amazement and the new memoir Where the Past Begins

Set in San Francisco and in a remote village of Southwestern China, Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses is a tale of American assumptions shaken by Chinese ghosts and broadened with hope. In 1962, five-year-old Olivia meets the half-sister she never knew existed, eighteen-year-old Kwan from China, who sees ghosts with her "yin eyes." Decades later, Olivia describes her complicated relationship with her sister and her failing marriage, as Kwan reveals her story, sweeping the reader into the splendor and violence of mid-nineteenth century China. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, Tan conjures up a story of the inheritance of love, its secrets and senses, its illusions and truths.

About this title

From the Publisher:

I hadn't read an Amy Tan book since Kitchen God's Wife and it was refreshing to see that she just gets better and better with her storytelling! This book was a lot more authentic. Kwan Li, Olivia's stepsister was such an intriguing character who had much more depth as you got to know her. In fact, she had so much depth that I feel like I missed somethings by reading this book only once. Kwan's ability to link the present with the past in a believable fashion was an example of Amy Tan's talent.

-Ceneta Lee Williams, Ballantine National Account Manager

From the Inside Flap:

The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.

"Truly magical...unforgettable...this novel...shimmer[s] with meaning."--San Diego Tribune

"The Hundred Secret Senses doesn't simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations."--Newsweek

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0143119087
• ISBN 13: 9780143119081
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368