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Simple Recipes: Stories - Hardcover

Thien, Madeleine

 
9780316833165: Simple Recipes: Stories
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0316833169 ISBN 13: 9780316833165
Verlag: Little, Brown, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

With delicate language and wisdom, Madeleine Thien explores the longing of families pulled apart by conflicts between generations, cultures, and values.

Each of these stories captures a deeply personal world in which characters struggle to reconcile family loyalty with individual desires. In "House," a 10-year-old girl longs for the alcoholic mother who left the house one day never to return. In "Dispatch," a woman tries to hold her marriage together even after finding proof that her husband is in love with someone else. In "A Map of the City," a young woman's troubled relationship with her father overshadows the course she takes in her adult life.

Thien's fresh perspective and spare, haunting prose have already won her prizes and the praise of established masters. Simple Recipes is the beginning of a luminous writing career.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Madeleine Thien, 26, is the Canadian-born daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

Rezensionen

As with an intricate puzzle whose final image can never be known, elements are missing from the lives of Thien's characters, and such loss imbues them with a tragic sweetness of haunting depth and resonance. In her debut collection of poignant short stories, Thien wistfully captures the angst and anguish of the disaffected: an alcoholic mother abandons her children; an immigrant father returns to his native land; a defiant daughter searches for her parents' approval. Deftly, delicately, Thien mines subtle yet abject misery to artfully reveal relationships in jeopardy. With tender pathos, she exposes the aching alienation caused by profound conflicts both multicultural and intergenerational, the common as well as the curious. Speaking in a voice eloquently empathetic, warm, and wise, Thien creates melancholy characterizations and plaintive plots that sear the memory with their piercing resolve, depicting longing that is nearly palpable in its desperation. These are accomplished and passionate tales, rich with a luminous reverence for those sharply defined moments and unerringly complex motivations that unify as quickly as they unravel. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Dysfunction and despair are the themes of this graceful debut collection, in which the protagonists describe their struggles to overcome pain caused by family or poor circumstances. The young female narrator of the title story remembers the moment her immigrant family fell apart: when her older, better assimilated brother was savagely beaten by their father after a confrontation between the two. The girl realizes that this act of "violence will turn all my love to shame and grief." "Alchemy" is a chilling, suspenseful story of disloyalty between family and best friends, in which two teenage girls must confront a sickening truth. In "House," 10-year-old Lorraine and her older sister, Kathleen, loiter in front of their former home in hopes of reuniting with the alcoholic mother who abandoned them. Miriam, the narrator of "A Map of the City," is alternately frustrated and saddened by her immigrant father's inability to make a living and allows his hurt to become her own. As powerful as most of the stories are, they sometimes suffer from the obviousness of their metaphors: the title story invokes worn-out descriptions of rice preparation; "Alchemy" features caged rabbits that don't run away when freed. Still, the simplicity of Thien's narration belies the complexity of her themes. She is a writer to watch.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Verlag
Little, Brown
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0316833169
ISBN 13 
9780316833165
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Giunti Editore
n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com

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