Book review: The Hundred Secret Senses

This is a solemn and momentous occasion: I actually finished a fiction book not written by Terry Pratchett. Will wonders never cease? Granted, it was Amy Tan, who I think most everyone agrees is a good author, so it was hardly going out on a limb, but still. Fiction! I read it!

...now I have to figure out semi-intelligent things to say about it. I'm so used to writing about the Discworld, it's going to take quite a paradigm shift to write about something else. Let's see...

The Hundred Secret Senses is a book about family, ghosts, and most of all (of course), love. Love that binds people together, love that tears them apart, love that makes you weep, makes you rage, makes you joyful, makes you jealous, makes you generous. Short(est) summary: Olivia is a rather bratty, self-absorbed 20-something whose rather neglectful, self-absorbed mother adopts her late husband's daughter, Kwan, from China. Kwan sees into the World of Yin, aka she sees, and converses with, dead people. Kwan is convinced that she and Olivia knew each other in a past life, and that various debts and promises must be carried out in this one (including keeping Olivia and her husband, Simon, together).

Kwan, I liked. She was kind and forgiving, generous and loyal, silly and dependable. Olivia, I didn't. She was entirely too wrapped up in herself and her own angst. I can hardly fault someone for despairing over whatever they choose to, but that doesn't mean that I particularly want to read about it for 300+ pages. She does get her act together and grow up a little toward the very end, but I felt it to be too little, too late.

But hey, I don't just read books for their characters. Tan's writing was pretty, sensitive, slightly surreal - fitting for the yin people. This, for example, "Her expression suggested that she knew the secrets of the past and future and they were all sad."

This book is sad much of the time: I was sad (and annoyed) for Olivia about her neglectful mother and inability to recognize and appreciate the good things in her life. I was sad that Simon and Olivia were so desperately unable to communicate. I was sad that Kwan disappeared. But Tan reminds us that joy and sorrow go together, hand in hand through the meadow. When given a sweater for her birthday, " 'Too good to wear,' laments Kwan with joy." To lament with joy seems almost an oxymoron, but I, and I imagine you, know exactly what is meant.

Here, have a picture of a flower to finish things off.

xo,
Devo