The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan (review)

174 WesternAmerican Literature I imagine the novelist would say something similar if readers expressed surprise at the language and subject matter of TheVermilionParrot, both ofwhich seem “the product of a tabloid-grade imagination,”as Kilgore puts it in describ­ ing the melodramatic fate of another character. “What did you expect from a book advertised as an ‘eco-thriller’?”Wallace might ask. Readers familiar with Wallace’s prize-winning nonfiction, such as The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution (1983), and expecting similar eloquence and insight are likely to be disappointed when they open this new book. However, readers open-minded enough to enjoy both meditative natural history and light­ hearted, “tabloid-grade”fiction will find this book a pleasant pastime. Those in the former group will probably want to skip the $18 hardback edition of this novel and wait for the paperback—better yet, wait for another work along the lines ofWallace’s 1988 Bulow Hammock: Mind in aForest. Potential readers might wonder whether The Vermilion Parrot lives up to its billing as an “eco-thriller.”Where, for instance, is the “eco”in it? Well, most of the narrative takes place in the woods, deserts, and mountains ofCalifornia and Mexico—and several of the characters, especially Kilgore (the narrator) and Sibsxy Seet Popleopits Zxyva (the parrot), are adept at noticing and identifying flora and fauna. But is the book a “thriller”? Aside from a lively river-running scene, I must say I found the narrative less “thrilling” than quirky, engaging by virtue of its unlikely cast of characters (like a comic book) rather than the appeal of its drama. Wallace clearly had fun transforming stereotypical West Coast outdoor types into perpetrators of international intrigue—the BLM agents, the conservationists-turned-thieves, the KGB cultist. The Ninja Turtles aren’t really in this book—expect them in Wallace’s next novel. SCOTT SLOVIC . Southwest Texas State University The Kitchen God’s Wife. By Amy Tan. (New York: Putnam’s, 1991. 415 pages, $22.95.) Two years after an impressive debut with her first novel TheJoy Luck Club, Amy Tan now presents an in-depth account of another endearing Chinese im­ migrant woman, a Chinatown florist in San Francisco. The first novel’smultiple­ voiced, sixteen stories examined the troublesome transmission of values from immigrant mothers to their American-born daughters. This second novel, narrated for the most part by only one mother, Winnie, explores the reason behind the protective, demanding and sometimes onerous motherly love. Initially set in contemporary, polyracial San Francisco, The Kitchen God’s Wifeis first, and briefly, narrated by Pearl, the middle-aged daughter, who hides Reviews 175 her multiple sclerosis from her worrisome mother. The mother, who has kept her past a secret from her daughter lest the latter should think of her as a “bad mother,”gradually reveals the real accounts ofher childhood in China, her first marriage during the Second World War to an incredibly vicious man, atid her romantic rendezvous with her second husband. Particularly interesting is the way she reconstructs her past—selective and logical, in her own superstitious way. Towards the end of the novel when she learns of her daughter’s disease, she creates out of a Chinese myth a guardian goddess, Kitchen God’s Wife, to ward off her daughter’s bad luck. As in her first novel, Tan provides the reader with fascinating details of Chinese traditions, myths and history, all of which serve to elucidate the mindset of the mother. Despite the occasional explanatory digressions, the warm and witty voice of the mother is engaging, and her story vividly illuminat­ ing of women’s sufferings in a male-dominated society and also of human psychology, particularly the invisible link between mother and daughter that cuts through cultural differences. In a sense, Amy Tan’s first two novels signal the beginning of a new phase in Asian American writing, the shift from an aggressive and desperate search for identity, as in Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston, to the proclamation of pride and reconciliation. SEIWOONG OH University ofNorth Texas Honor at Daybreak. By Elmer Kelton. (New York: Doubleday, 1991. 390 pages, $18.95.) Through his realism and understanding of...