The Kitchen God's Wife: A Novel

If you enjoyed The Joy Luck Club, you'll enjoy The Kitchen Gods Wife. Incredibly moving story and characters. I really enjoy the weaving together of past and prsent.

Jade Nunez: The Kitchen God’s Wife written by Amy Tan is a book filled with plot twist and drama. It’s an interesting historical fiction book with a different way to present the plot. The story is told by two characters, Winnie and Pearl, and each take turns in their point of view. Throughout their points of view, it takes place in two locations, modern America and China in 1937. They talk with each other as mother a daughter explaining to each other secrets. The mother talks about her life before she came to China and the daughter must confess something. Those two different points of view are in first person and throughout the story it gives greater detail. The story drags in the beginning, the first two chapters, then going further in the story it becomes faster. Due to that I would probably change the beginning since that was the main problem. It seemed like it was filler and keeping away from the main event, but it’s very important to the book. One good thing that makes the story interesting must be the characters and between Winnie and Pearl, Winnie must be the protagonist. What makes her the protagonist is that she goes through a quest in her life and majority of the story is about her. The main antagonist must be confronting themselves with telling the truth. This creates a major conflict of Winnie telling her back story to her daughter before her friend Helen tells the story instead. Due to this conflict the story had a feeling of guilt when they would talk. One of my favorite characters must be Winnie’s mom. Though she has very little scenes into the book, the way that she influences Winnie’s life is very important. She has a huge impact just in her personality and reading when she would talk made her so cool! I’m not a person who reads often, but I would read this book again if needed. I highly recommend this to people who enjoy reading about struggles and family, or to anyone who dedicates themselves to read good books.

Amy Tan's second novel, while not as compelling as her first, "The Joy Luck Club," still makes for an absorbing reading adventure. Abusive spouses/partners, take note: Whether or not there are "kitchen deities," there IS karma. Obviously, the author has seen it in action -- and so have I!

I remember being introduced to Amy Tan in the early years of my old book club with Joy Luck Club. While I don’t remember plot details, I do have a recollection of the feelings inspired by the Chinese women in the book. I felt the same with this book - a little amused by the superstitions that in order to avoid bad luck you must always avoid positive sayings, and the secrets, always the secrets. The first half of the book talks about present day events, but the second half is the meat of the matter. In these pages all old secrets between mother and daughter are revealed. Great read.

I've read this book a few times now because it's one of the top of my reading list. What a beautifully written novel full of hopes and humor, sadness and the strife of WWII China. And of course the mother-daughter bond that Amy weaves magically. See if this book doesn't end up at the top of your own favorites list.

This is another fantastic story by Amy Tan. Love hearing stories of strong women and what they overcame. If you are fascinated with other cultures and traditions you will enjoy this book. It is the story of an American Chinese woman telling her emotional story of growing up in China many years ago to her grown daughter. Loved it.

After reading Amy Tan's, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER, I was inspired to read her second novel, THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE because Tan does an excellent job inviting readers into the lives of first generation Chinese American women. Tan's novels goes further by offering us a glimpse of cultural conflicts that many first generation Chinese American women experience, and a deeper understanding about their complex relationships with their mothers.In this fascinating story we learn 'in flashbacks' the story of Pearl's mother, Winnie and her life as a young girl growing up in the turn of the century China. This is also a wonderful story about Chinese culture and the traditional role of women who must learn to accept their fate and low status in family life. Also, we learn about secrets that Winnie has kept from her daughter, and why she was ashamed to tell her daughter her deepest secrets. Through Winnies' story, we learn about how she coped with physical abuse, and how she struggled to survive during the pre-war days in China. We also learn about Winnie's experiences, which led her to Shanghai during WWII when she becomes separated from her husband.THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE is an engaging story with various subplots that will keep you enthralled. If you enjoy Amy Tan's novels, you will not be disappointed.Maizie Lucille JamesJuly 12, 2010

Amy Tan does such a beautiful job of weaving tales and inserting past memories into present context. She shares the difficult lives and experiences of these women of China so long ago. The struggles that they went through and how each of them have been shaped by these challenges.Her characters are so well drawn as to know them. The character of Wen Fu was one that I found myself hating for his cruelty and selfishness. The way she infuses so much detail of life in China so long ago and of life during wartime. It is achingly poignant and sometimes very sad.I love her writing and her subject matter of women and how they became to be the way they are today through the lives and challenges they experience. The element of Mother and Daughter each learning more about themselves through learning about the other, is a theme she does so very well. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Amy Tan, or simply who enjoy reading about people who have lived through so much adversity to find their way to happiness.

I discovered Amy Tan through 'The Valley of Amazement' and was blown away (a must read). The Kitchen God's Wife begins slowly and I was concerned that maybe the V of A was a one off. However you are then immersed into a very personal account of a different time, culture and place. Amy has a talent for drawing the reader into her descriptions of, for most of us, an unknown culture and time through very personal accounts. Always entertaining and informative, often sad.

It was truly painful and mouth dropping to see the kind of suffering you can bring to yourself and your love ones by not standing up for yourself nor those who you love. The most painful thing of all is to see how it is out of ignorance, really not knowing any better. A person programmed to be that way can really have it that bad, specially when the societal culture makes it basically impossible to have it another way. Extremely sad!Amy Tan really depicts pretty well how wounded people re-act and in the figure of Wen Fu, we found a truly pathological person, a real predator, a psychopath. It was very instructive to see how real this character was. China and its environment and time felt so real as well.It is worth reading the book from all the potential lessons that can be extracted. It was really a very good book.

this book had great courage and strength. How the heroine managed to survive the brutality of Wen Fu and manage to survive to love again I shall never comprehend. Amy Tan is a first class storyteller.

This book takes the reader on an astonishing journey, with good, bad, happy and very sad moments. The central character has lived a roller coaster life which encompasses the second world war. My only criticism is that the bulk of the story was told to one character by another during the course of one afternoon and I think they would have had to speak very fast to get all this in!! However, that aside this is a moving and fascinating story which lifts the lid on the many hardships suffered by the Chinese around the time of WW2.Jane Muir Author of e-book 'That Feel Good Factor'.

A well-written, compelling and interesting book. Once I was on Winnie's section I couldn't put it down. I found Pearl's introduction rather dull, and didn't like her as a character. Not a comfortable or pleasant book to read, but informative, thought-provoking and capably put together.HOWEVER I think I spotted a huge continuity error. The beginning of the book - Pearl's section - seems to be set pretty much in the present day. Pearl's husband, Phil, is 46 , and Pearl is 41. They have two children aged 8 and 3. Yet later on we discover that Pearl was born in 1945, at the end of the war. This makes the year the modern parts of this book is set 1986, but there is mention of "the '89 earthquake", and Phil loads software onto his laptop computer.