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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780375701528
ISBN number: 0375701524
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: June 30, 1998
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: June 30, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 45624
Studio: Vintage
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Product Description:
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
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Rated by buyers 
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Well, I've been reading Amy Tan and teaching her in my college classes for about 8 years now, and she's always the "favorite reading" among my students who relate to her many characters and her art of story telling. Me too. I just finished The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and it's a wonderful blend of contemporary Chinese American and old world China, just as her Joy Luck Club was and is. It's also a mix of narrative voices: the humour even sarcasm of photographer Olivia, and the magic realism of her Chinese step-sister Kwan. Parts of the book set in
China remind me of A Passage to India...especially with the visits to the ancient caves, but the writing is clearly Amy Tan who can make you laugh and cry on the same page. It's an enjoyable journey into the heart: "And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true." She restores hope through our finding compassion in ourselves. It's a very contemporary yet timeless theme.
Rated by buyers -
While Amy Tan is an amazingly talented writer with a lot of great books under her belt, she is arguably most well known as the author of The Joy Luck Club, which I have yet to read. I did, however, read The Hundred Secret Senses (originally published in 1996) not once but twice. I almost never do that because the second reading just feels boring. However, that wasn't the case with this book because it was so enjoyable and rich that rereading felt more like visiting old friends than rehashing something I already knew.
While on the subject of this novel's freshness, it bears mention that some reviewers suggested The Hundred Secret Senses was little more than a rehash of previous, very similar, plots from her earlier books. Obviously, I can't speak for The Joy Luck Club but I did read The Kitchen God's Wife which had a similar theme but in my view an entirely different plot. I also happened to think this novel was the markedly better of the two.
Olivia's mother is American, her father Chinese. She comes from a "traditional American family." At least for the most part. At the age of eighteen, Kwan entered the lives of Olivia (then four) and her family from her native China. Nothing about Kwan is American from her accent to her belief that she has yin eyes to see "those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco."
These ghosts are not only a fundamental part of the story but one of the main reasons Olivia can never truly get along with her older sister.
For a while, it seems like Olivia will be able to ignore Kwan's eccentricities and lead her own, American, life. But the more Olivia hears, the more Kwan's old ghosts stories intrigue her. Their enticement grows when Olivia unexpectedly finds herself traveling to China with her husband, Simon, and Kwan for a magazine assignment. As the three navigate Kwan's childhood stomping grounds, surprising connections are made between the threesome and, amazingly, with one of Kwan's ghost stories.
The novel chronicles Olivia's relationship with Kwan as well as her early courtship and eventual estrangement from Simon. At the same time, in alternating chapters, The Hundred Secret Senses tells the story of one of Kwan's past lives in China during the 1800s--a dramatic love story closely tied to Kwan's (and Olivia's) present lives.
Tan's prose here is conversational and enticing, feeling like a friend telling a particularly juicy story at dinner or over the phone. The connections between past, present and the very distant past is seamless creating a tight narrative that, by the end of the book, weaves all aspects of the story together in a neat package.
At the same time, The Hundred Secret Senses offers an interesting commentary on assimilation and multi-cultuarism with both Olivia and Simon being half-white and half-Chinese. Although Olivia might be too old to say she comes of age in this novel, it would be fair to say she learns to accept her own identity by the novel's completion.
While all of that makes for a dynamo on its own, my favorite aspect of this book is the way in which it deals with family relations both romantically (with Olivia and Simon) and otherwise (with Olivia and Kwan). The story ends with an optimism that suggests, if you are willing to see them, loved ones are never very far away.
Rated by buyers 
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First 50 pages or so are bit hard to digest but as you start to get involved into the story, the whole experience of reading this book is quite satisfying. I think Amy has handled mysticism very well in this book as it blends in with the story even though it is not exactly clear whether Kwan was really seeing ghosts or lying about it. I would like to compare incompetent handling of mysticism in Hundred Years of Solitude that had left a bad taste in my mouth.
Money well-spent, I must say! BTW, it is very funny too at times!
Rated by buyers -
THIS IS MY FAVORITE OF AMY TAN'S BOOKS- It is original- love the characters especially Kwan. I LOVE THE PAST AND PRESENT STORIES. AND MOST OF ALL I LOVE the fact that I look at my dog and wonder what unloyal man was he and how many loyal dog lives will he endure to make it toi Chinese heaven.
It has been years since I read this book but all the characters have stayed in my memory and often pop in my mind like a good Seinfeld episode.
Rated by buyers -
i have enjoyed many but not all of Tan's novels. This was my favorite by far. the story drew me in completely and i felt i could hear the voices of the sisters so clearly. i didn't want it to end.
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