Simple Recipes: Stories [Hardcover]

Madeleine Thien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The seven stories in Simple Recipes, 26-year-old Madeleine Thien's debut collection, show an imaginative depth and sympathetic wisdom beyond her years. The title story is a deceptively simple tale of a girl remembering how her father used to cook rice: sorting and cleaning, then measuring the water by resting the tip of his index finger on the surface of the rice so that the water reached the bend of his first knuckle. Her father impresses his young daughter with the dexterous way in which he magically transforms a few ingredients into something that satisfies basic needs and sustains life. When those same skillful hands turn violent, though, and beat her rebellious older brother, the daughter struggles to hold onto the memory of the kitchen ritual she shared with her father as it shatters into metaphors for abuse, intolerance, and shame.

Another story, "Alchemy," conveys a complex friendship between school-age girls, as one seeks to understand love and the other contends with an eating disorder and sexual abuse at home. The dynamic between these girls is subtly described and never overstated. Revelations, when they come, are as startling, complex, and mysterious as in real life. Thien is a genuine talent to watch. --Nigel Hunt

From Publishers Weekly

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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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown (June 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316833169
• ISBN-13: 978-0316833165
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,659,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Madeleine Thien is the author of two books of fiction, Simple Recipes, a collection of stories, and Certainty, a novel. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Granta, The Walrus, Five Dials, Brick, and the Asia Literary Review, and her work has been translated into more than sixteen language. In 2010, she received the Ovid Festival Prize, awarded each year to an international writer of promise. She lives in Montreal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite Craftsmanship, December 4, 2002

By 

carol hass (Sammamish, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simple Recipes: Stories (Hardcover)

This writer will grip your imagination and not let go. She etches an exquisite visual picture with each sentence she writes. Not only will you feel you are in each scene, but you will remember each scene in detail. There is a power with this precision of detail. Like an exquisitely crafted and edited piece of cinematography, there is no surplus or redundance---only crystal clear visual and auditory images that will transfix you, and make you more than when you began the reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the Fan of the Short Story, September 11, 2002

By 

FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simple Recipes: Stories (Hardcover)

Fans of the short story will want to add this collection by Madeleine Thien to their bookshelves. With beauty and brevity of language, Thien takes the reader on journeys to the inner core of her characters.

Each story deals with an individual's internal issues in response to an individual relationship within the family structure. Mother-daughter, father-daughter, husband-wife, and friend-friend relationships are examined in such exquisite detail that the reader will find something to draw them into the stories.

In each one of the seven, Thien wields her delicate power with words to paint a picture of a person trying to bring together their individuality with desire for family. She seems to have a direct connection with her characters' view of the world and of their place in it. She tells the story from one point of view, yet the reader gets a sense of how all of the characters feel about themselves as well as the other people in the story.

In the title piece, "Simple Recipes," we meet a girl coming to grips with losing the hero worship she has always had for her father. This man is able to work wonders with rice, but cannot turn the same magic on his rebellious teenage son. A fight escalates to rage and a subsequent harsh punishment. The girl wonders how her father can have this dichotomy to him, of being so gentle with her while losing his temper with his son.

"Four Days From Oregon" examines both the marital and mother-child relationships. A restless woman runs away with her lover, three daughters in tow. The children want to return home, unsure of this new man in their lives, but their mother needs this time to make up her mind.

"A Map of the City" deals with how her relationship with her father overshadows other parts of her life. In "Alchemy," a young girl tries to find a way to help her friend tell the truth and stop unwanted attention from her father. Three other equally intriguing and well-written stories round out the collection.

Although some of these stories have appeared in both American and Canadian magazines, this is a first book for Madeleine Thien. The short story is definitely her medium and she has already won praise for her work from established masters. After reading this book, you will understand why.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple recipes for impacting stories, April 9, 2005

By 

Myles Delta Freeman "Myles" (Halifax, NS CANADA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simple Recipes: Stories (Hardcover)

An insightful and spiritually filled book about the Asian North American experience. I won't peg it as Asian American. The experience is not all that unique to America, although the American culture does lead to a different set of circumstances than those existing in Canada. However, as the issues here are more internal and within the family, it has more universality than the Asian American experience. Even if it is fictitious, there's enough reality in there that it probably just some true stories with altered details and circumstances that are crafted to fit together to express what the author wishes to. I know, with respect to the nature of the story topics, because I am Asian. I can identify with the stories to some extent or another, be it from my own experiences or other Asians' who I have known over the years. Ms Thien's writing skills are very good and the voice is genuine, and the stories will make you think and expose you well and fairly to the world Asian North Americans live in if you don't know much about it already. I'm just not the same personality as she and her characters and so I sometimes question how the stories would end were I to write them, but that's just differences in points of views. I can very much appreciate Ms Thien's writings and would recommend it.