Tag Archives: literary fiction

The Hundred Secret Senses

Book Review of The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan

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The Hundred Secret Senses

I’m still trying to pare down my physical book shelf. So, I’m getting to a lot of older, traditionally published books that I’ve picked up here and there then let languish. This week it was The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan.

Description from Goodreads:
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.

Review:
It’s Amy Tan, so you can expect an emotionally over-involved, unreliable, female narrator/main character, complicated family dynamics, a distant mother and a satisfying but not perfect ending. You can also expect excellent, emotive, descriptive writing. This one holds few surprises.

I did however enjoy it for the most part. I struggled a bit with Simon’s character. He was just as his ex described him, too quick to go with the flow. And as a result, I felt a lot of Olivia’s complaints and fears were legitimate and his unwillingness to stand up for them, or even apparently understand that he should, felt contrived to me. What’s worse, I didn’t feel he deserved Olivia’s compromises in the end.

Similarly, I disliked how much of the turmoil was laid at the feet of Olivia’s own self-doubt. This felt very much like blaming her for her own victimhood. Did she deserve some? Sure, but I felt too much was left to her by dint of Simon’s obliviousness.

Kwan, of course, stood out for me. I adored her. Was she overly cheerful and too forgiving? Yes, but I also saw her reasoning in the end.

All in all, exactly what I would expect from an Amy Tan book. I’m glad to have read it, but now need to clean my palate with something silly and fluffy.

What I’m drinking: Strong black tea with milk. My English relatives are visiting. I think I’m up to four or five cups a day now.

Technologies of the Self

Book Review: Technologies of the Self, by Haris A. Durrani

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Technologies of the SelfI purchased a copy of Technologies of the Self ( Haris A. Durrani) from Brainmill Press.

Description from Goodreasds:
In this timely and instantly notable fiction debut, Haris Durrani immerses readers in the life of a young American Muslim struggling to understand himself in the context of his family, classmates, and contemporary urban life.

Engineering student Jihad, or “Joe” as he introduces himself in the confusing intersections of post 9/11 New York City, finds himself on a personal quest of possibly a spiritual nature, even if he isn’t sure that’s what it is – after all, it’s hard enough to keep halal in his Dominican-Pakistani-Muslim Washington Heights household.

He’s surprised to find himself in the stories his Uncle TomAs tells of his own youth, stories in which TomAs fights both the devil and the weaknesses of the flesh – often at the same time. Culture, nation, religion, family, identity, race, and time battle for dominion over Jihad until he realizes he is facing the same demon his uncle claims to have defeated, and all Jihad has to fight with is himself.

Review:
This was a really interesting read. My takeaway was that it is about intersectionality, cultural adaptation, mediation and compromise, the generational effects of immigration and their importance to ones understanding of self. I chose to take the events as symbolic, but they could easily be read as symptoms of mental illness or literal too, culminating in a slightly different conclusion.

Our narrator, Jihad, lives in New York/Connecticut with two immigrant parents. His mother is from the Dominican Republic and his father is from Pakistan. Half his extended family is Christian, half (including himself) are Muslim. He’s well read and becoming well educated, but one of the most influential people in his life is his waster of an uncle, who tells him stories of meeting his Devil. Jihad’s life and his experience of America and what it means to be American is not without the need for negotiation, neither is his understanding of what it means to be himself, whoever that may be.

The writing is stark but beautiful. It does require you to ferret out meaning and relative importance of things in much the same way Jihad (and Tomas even more) is doing with his life. It is not a straightforward kind of story, but one worth reading.

There also happens to be a fun little, award-winning, free, prequel type story called Forty-two Reasons Your Girlfriend Works for the FBI, CIA, NSA, ICE, S.H.I.E.L.D., Fringe Division, Men in Black, or Cylon Overlords.

The Whipping Club

Book Review of The Whipping Club, by Deborah Henry

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The whipping clubI won a copy of The Whipping Boy, by Deborah Henry.

Description from Goodreads:
The Whipping Club explores the sacrificial secrets we keep to protect our loved ones and the impact that uncovered secrets have on marriage, family and society. Both a wrenching family drama and a harrowing suspense story, it chronicles an interfaith couple’s attempt in 1960’s Ireland to save their son from corrupt institutions.

Review:
I won a copy of this book a long time ago, but put off reading it because it looked like it was going to be so heavy. It turned out not to be what I thought, but I’m not sure it was better. This is a hard on to review objectively because I just so strongly disliked it. Everything in this book is grim, even the theoretically happy(ish) ending. It’s all people feeling miserable and being miserable to each-other, especially those in position of authority, and all of that misery is offloaded onto the shoulders of a blameless 11-year-old boy. Even the kind characters are often complacent in horrendous abuses. I felt bad when I finished this book and I do not enjoy that experience.

I can say that I had trouble with the points of view. It stared centered solely on Marian and remained so long enough that I settled into the single POV, but then another one popped up and then another and another until we had an omniscient narrator. But it felt willy-nilly. I also sometimes had trouble telling what was meant to be current and what was memory or flashback.

And honestly, I just didn’t particularly like any of the characters. I appreciated that Marian was educated and taught by her father to think for herself and be proud of her differences, something you don’t see in a lot of mid-60s female characters, but I didn’t relate to her. The only ones I came close to caring about were Adrian and Peter and they were brutalized. Peter especially, I felt he was little more than Henry’s whipping boy, like she wanted this horrible thing to happen but didn’t want to irrevocably contaminate her sympathetic character.

Then, it finished with this rousing declaration to protect the innocent and fight the good fight with a strength of will I didn’t sense in any of the characters up that point. In the end, those who actually enjoy depressing book club books this may enjoy this. But it wasn’t a winner for me.