The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan: book review

In Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) Olivia meets her older Chinese half-sister and first child of her father, Jack Yee, at the age of five. Kwan, 18, leaves China to live with her step-family in San Francisco. Kwan believes that she has “yin eyes”: that she can see and hear the ghosts of the dead. With the knowledge of the dead, of Chinese wisdom, and the ability to diagnose illnesses, Kwan protects and advises her new-found sister, Olivia.

Olivia thinks that Kwan has an opinion about everything. Olivia thinks she is nosey, interfering, persistent, persuasive, talkative and worst of all – Kwan wants everyone, particularly Olivia, to be happy all the time.

This is a beautifully and poignantly written story of Olivia’s relationship with her separated husband, Simon, and her half-sister in America and on a journey to Kwan’s Chinese village. Olivia tells the tale with humour, honesty and a sense of guilt at her annoyance with Kwan’s interference in her life.

It’s a tale of Chinese intuition, dreams, superstitions, ghosts and legends set amid the world of American logic and reason. Yet it is more than a tale of American-Chinese differences. It tells of sisters as different as chalk and cheese – in age, in lifestyle, in aspirations, and in culture - and of Kwan’s desperation to be a part of her sister’s life. It is Tan’s third and best book.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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