Tan, Amy - Ruth Pavey (review date 16 February 1996)
Ruth Pavey (review date 16 February 1996)
SOURCE: A review of The Hundred Secret Senses, in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 9, No. 390, p. 38.
[In the following review, Pavey considers Tan's unifying device in The Hundred Secret Senses unconvincing, but asserts that, "this does not detract from the great appeal of her character, Kwan (who combines saintly good humour with wit, practicality and guile), or the enjoyable liveliness of her style."]
Kwan, the co-heroine of The Hundred Secret Senses, has yin eyes, second sight. At least she thinks she has, which is why she talks of relating to ghosts as an everyday experience. There is nothing fey about Kwan. Having spent the first 18 years of her life in rural China, she takes uncomplainingly to being uprooted to join her dead father's new family in San Francisco. But how is her much younger half-sister to accommodate Kwan's hotline to the past? From the first sentence...
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