Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife is a painful and emotionally draining novel about secrets that leaves the reader with mixed feelings.

Pearl has always kept secrets from her mother, but little does she know that her mother, Winnie Louie, has her own. After years of silence about her past, Winnie Louie shares tragic tales that involve rape, fraud, marital violence, and more abuse than one can imagine.

This is where the reader’s mixed emotional reactions factor in. Although the book does have a happy ending, the tragedies Winnie Louie faces are impossible to forget and continue to hang over the reader, creating confusion - should one feel happy about the ending? Or sad about the story? The reader is left in a quandary and emotionally drained from the horrors of the novel.

With simple story-telling, The Kitchen God’s Wife is just another vehicle for author Amy Tan to continue lamenting the difficulties of her childhood and adolescence.