Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Tan, Amy - Penelope Mesic (review date 5 November 1995)
Tan, Amy - Penelope Mesic (review date 5 November 1995)
Penelope Mesic (review date 5 November 1995)
SOURCE: "Sisterly Bonds," in Chicago Tribune Books, November 5, 1995, pp. 1, 11.
[In the following review, Mesic praises Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses stating, "She provides what is most irresistible in popular fiction: a feeling of abundance, an account so circumstantial, powerful and ingenious that it seems the story could go on forever."]
Down in Birmingham, Alabama, under a sign that says Ollie's, there's a circular stainless-steel structure like a just-landed flying saucer. It seats 400 and is always full. Only two things are served there, barbecue and pie. Clearly, Ollie, whoever he was, realized that no third thing could ever be as good and quit while he was ahead. It may seem that this has nothing to do with Amy Tan's latest novel, The Hundred Secret Senses, which is about two Chinese half-sisters, but there is a marked similarity. The novel is like Ollie's in combining...
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- Introduction
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Criticism
- Merle Rubin (review date 21 April 1989)
- Scarlet Cheng (review date Summer 1989)
- Robb Forman Dew (review date 16 June 1991)
- Elgy Gillespie (review date Summer 1991)
- Penelope Fitzgerald (review date 11 July 1991)
- Helen Yglesias (review date September 1991)
- Scarlet Cheng (review date Fall 1991)
- Walter Shear (essay date Spring 1993)
- Stephen Souris (essay date Summer 1994)
- Judith Caesar (essay date Fall 1994–1995)
- Bonnie Braendlin (essay date 1995)
- Gloria Shen (essay date 1995)
- Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong (essay date 1995)
- Claire Messud (review date 29 October 1995)
- Penelope Mesic (review date 5 November 1995)
- Donna Nurse (review date 6 November 1995)
- M. Marie Booth Foster (essay date 1996)
- Ruth Pavey (review date 16 February 1996)
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