December 26, 2014
When I first saw the title for this book, I imagined that it was about a youngish American woman of Chinese descent in an unhappy marriage to a master chef. I was somewhat off the mark, but not too much. The Kitchen God, so it goes, had been a mortal, an unfaithful husband to a good wife. After running her off, his life fell apart, and when he unwittingly received her aid in her new home, he burned himself to death for shame. For admitting that he was an asshole, he got to be a minor god, one that judged the behavior of mortals. Meanwhile, his good wife got diddily squat. It's understandable that Winnie would feel a connection to a wife who suffered but eventually found a happy situation.
I enjoyed most of this book. I wasn't really drawn into the first two chapters, told from Pearl's perspective. When Winnie started narrating, I thought, welp, same idea as The Joy Luck Club, I guess. Fortunately, this is not the case. The bulk of the story is Winnie speaking to Pearl directly, telling her about her childhood, then her horrible marriage to Wen Fu. Most interesting of all was Winnie's life-long relationship with Helen. Their's is a love-hate relationship, and I almost felt like that was really the heart of the story. Winnie often criticizes Helen's perspective, claiming that she remembers certain things wrong. Maybe, maybe not; we are only getting Winnie's perspective here, after all. She admits herself that she had a bit of a "butt monkey" complex in regards to her childhood in Taiwan being raised by relatives. Plus, Helen ultimately proves herself to be a smarter cookie than Winnie gives her credit for.
Though there's no doubt that Winnie's first husband Wen Fu is a monster. He would force Winnie to humiliate herself behind closed doors from the start of their marriage, a total dominance sort of thing that she was not at all into. But there wasn't much she could do, as a woman in China.
I appreciated that this book gave a Chinese perspective on World War II. The Rape of Nanking is mentioned, and there's a bit on how Americans were involved in China. Winnie's second husband, the saintly Jimmy Louie, is an American of Chinese descent, I think in the Air Force. She eventually ends up in San Francisco with him, but only after more years of abuse from her husband (his mental issues worsened after a terrible car accident), the death of her son (she'd already lost two infant daughters), and over a year in prison thanks to her bitter husband. Oh yeah, and getting raped by Wen Fu one more time before she escaped to America, making him probably Pearl's father.
I didn't get at first why the first two chapters were necessary. Yeah, it sucks that Pearl has MS and that she and her mother have both kept such big secrets from each other. And it was necessary to set up why Winnie was telling her daughter her life story. But I thought, why not just get right to it, who needs a reason? But then, I liked the reveal at the end (back briefly in Pearl's perspective) about what Helen did. She's a great character. That wouldn't have been possible without the first two chapters, I guess. These chapters also revealed just how much these two women had kept hidden from their families, and just how much Winnie was revealing.
Tan is best known for The Joy Luck Club, of course, but I thought this book was better. Similar themes, obviously. I'd be curious to read some other of Tan's works and see if she sticks to the same concepts (mother-daughter relationships, starting over, bad marriages and very bad men), or if she moves away from that in her other novels. She does it well in this one, more quality historical fiction than anything else, but I hate it when authors rehash the same ideas time and again.
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