The Kitchen God's Wife

Rating:
Summary: NOT AS GOOD AS "JOY LUCK".
Review: It starts great, but then it starts to linger off and it just doesn't have the same "hold" as "joy luck" did. I don't want the same story as "joy luck" but I wanted a little more interesting characters. And it seems the story is repeated constantly regarding the characters, "Wen Fu" and "Winnie Louie" their awful marriage. A little disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Amy Tan Scores Again with a Beautiful Tale!
Review: Now that I've read 2 of Ms. Tan's novels (THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE and THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER) and seen the movie THE JOY LUCK CLUB, I can honestly identify her as one of my favorite authors. Her wonderful story-telling ability, believable characters and fascinating exploration of Chinese culture and history make her stories some of the best I've read in a long time.

The story begins when both Winnie and her daughter Pearl are put in a position whereby they both have to reveal their secrets to each other. The novel, however, is dominated by Winnie's autobiographical account of her life in China before Pearl was born.

Winnie Louie told a fascinating tale of her life - a tale which included a strong focus on Chinese culture and history from a very human perspective. She was a very strong individual who was able to survive and prevail through terrible hardships ...And she was still able to pass on a strongly feminist message about self-repect to her daughter despite the emotional and physical abuse inflicted upon her by her first husband in China.

This is such a powerful story dealing with the mother-daughter bond, friendship, loyalty, cultural differentiations, personal choices, courage and self-respect. The story left me with a lump in my throat - feeling sad, touched and uplifted all at the same time. I can't wait to read THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES next!

Rating:
Summary: A story for the heart
Review: No mattter how much you love your mother, this will help you to appreciate her more. my family is not chinese, nor are we immigrants, however, after reading this book, I learned to appreciate the sacrifices my mother made in her life to better mine.
I am currently trying to read The Joy-Luck Club right now, but it is nowhere near as good or as fast of a read. Many people who read the book with me came to the same conclusion that I did. This book is not about the outcome, it is about the jouney. The road we take in life determines the kind of person we will become.

Rating:
Summary: The story of a woman's life in China
Review: THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE, Amy Tan's second novel, is another story that deals with family history and relationships between mothers and daughters. Unlike her first novel, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE takes place mostly in the past.

Pearl and her mother Winnie have never had a very good relationship. Winnie criticizes Pearl often, and makes it unpleasant for Pearl whenever they come to visit. The book opens with Pearl, her non-Asian husband Phil, and their two young children making the drive to San Francisco to attend a family wedding.

Everyone in the family is there at the wedding, including close family friends and relatives that have been a part of Winnie's life since her days back in China in the early '20's and '30's. An argument breaks out between Pearl and Winnie at the wedding, but before Pearl and her family return home, she and her mother talk. The story that Pearl hears from her mother is a story she has never heard before. It is a secret that Winnie has kept from her daughter for decades, for fear of hurting Pearl. Pearl herself has a secret, but it becomes secondary as Winnie's story unfolds.

Winnie's modern day world was a lifetime away from her early beginnings in China. She was born to a woman that was one of many wives belonging to a man Winnie knew as her father. He was a stranger to her, never giving her the time of day. Winnie's mother was beautiful and educated, and together they lived the life of the pampered rich because of her mother's station in life. Winnie's life turns for the worse when her mother disappears for reasons unknown to the young girl. Winnie finds herself losing the protective life she had with her mother, the home she grew up in, and placed in the home of a distant relative, to be treated like a second class citizen. Her life is never the same again.

Because of her new station in life, Winnie is destined to never marry, but through a fluke of fate, she ends up marrying a man that should have been destined for her cousin Peanut. However, after they are married, Winnie finds out that this husband is not the romantic wonderful man he appeared to be during the beginning of their courtship. From this point in her life, she knows only unhappiness and suffering.

Winnie has to endure much during this marriage, including abuse, countless miscarriages and loss of children to sickness and poverty, and with the outbreak of war in China, she does not know what her future will be like. What finally brings her to America and to the husband that Pearl knows as her father, is for the reader to find out.

I highly recommend THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE. Although this book is not as fast a read as THE JOY LUCK CLUB, I found that the history of Winnie was fascinating, taking me to a country that I know so little about. The story of Pearl becomes second to Winnie's, but Winnie's story bridges the two stories together, as the reader finds by the end of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: If you like slow, painfully detailed stories told by whiny, negative characters, you'll love this book. Otherwise, don't bother. I have to say that the last few pages were pretty good. However, it's not worth it to plod through the preceding 500 pages just to get there.

Rating:
Summary: the most moving book by Tan
Review: I have read all of Amy Tan's work and this is by far the most original, moving story she has ever written. She always uses the theme of Chinese-American daughter does not understand Chinese mother and in that respect, she can be tiresome. But this book lifted past that and was very well-written and engrossing, and so I give it 5 stars.

Winnie, the mother, goes into depth telling her daughter Pearl about her first marriage -- indeed, her life before meeting Pearl's father in the 1940s -- her childhood when she was raised as an inferior to her cousins; her marriage to Wen Fu, a megalomaniac in China; her first few children who died in babyhood. It is a sad story, made palatable by the fact that Winnie has the spirit of a survivor that she will not let the awful Wen Fu destroy, no matter how hard he tries.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite Amy Tan book
Review: I have read all of Amy Tan's books and this one ranks as my favorite. I grew attatched to Pearl and Winnie over the course of the book. I enjoyed that it dealt with family and superstitions, good and evil. Amy Tan always weaves and interesting tale. Joy Luck Club is probably her most famous work, but I think this one outshines it by far.

This is definitely one of the books that I will re-read in the futre. When the story ended, it kept me wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book!!!
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. I have also read The Joy Luck Club, and was glad to see Amy Tan continue to explore the mother-daughter bond, which is so strong and complicated - no matter the race, creed or color.

I have decided that I am a big fan of Amy Tan's; her stories are so well written that I sometimes feel like I'm eavesdropping on the characters conversations, and seeing what they are seeing. And what characters she creates!! While Wen Fu was one of the most despicable characters that I have read about in a while, Jimmie Louie was an absolutely great guy, and his love for Winnie was heartwarming (she SO deserved it!!!).

Winnie was right, she was like the Kitchen God's wife; she was a very good wife to an evil man, who was loved and admired by people for all the wrong reasons. But good always wins in the end!

Rating:
Summary: still a good book
Review: To me this book wasn't as good as the joy luck club, but it's still a good book. I felt that this book is very similar to the joy luck club. It almost didn't really change storyline. maybe it's just me but I'm one of those people who can't read the same thing twice. I can read a book twice but not 2 different books with similar storyline. anyways I think this book is good but not as good as some others.

Rating:
Summary: On Kitchen God's Wife
Review: I could not put that book down. A masterpiece in conflict, character development, and poetic language, this book was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the use of narration implmented to keep the story line going.