Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries)
The Love Wife - Vintage Contemporaries
Author: Gish Jen
From the massively talented Gish Jen comes a barbed, moving, and stylistically dazzling new novel about the elusive nature of kinship. The Wongs describe themselves as a “half half” family, but the actual fractions are more complicated, given Carnegie’s Chinese heritage, his wife Blondie’s WASP background, and the various...  more »
Info icon
ISBN-13: 9781400076512
ISBN-10: 140007651X
Publication Date: 10/11/2005
Pages: 400
Rating:
  • Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
 15

3.8 stars, based on 15 ratings
Publisher: Vintage
Book Type: Paperback
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 10 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
I really enjoyed it. The two daughter's view of their adoptions was especially thought provoking.
reviewed The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 7 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
The story is told from each person's view of how they see their world. With two adopted children, husband, wife, and housekeeper all commenting on the events that happen in this story. It helped me understand and improve my relationship with my mother.
mom2nine avatar reviewed The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 342 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Although this book has insight into the Chinese mindset or view of American life, there is so much more to it than that. Believable, likeable characters. In most marriages the couple spends more time with one side than the other, this book shakes up everyone's family comfort zone a bit. Add to that the challenges of adoption, as the children get older they question their place in the family, esp. with a biological child thrown into the mix. Family dynamics which surpass ethnic variations.
paigu avatar reviewed The Love Wife (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 120 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
A lot different from her previous books ("Typical American" and "Mona and the Promised Land"); I felt this book was a lot sadder in tone. It is written in a strange way, from multiple characters' perspectives, almost sounding like a newscast. The book is rather mellow and the "surprise" at the end isn't really much of a shocker. Jen does do a good job capturing the slow assimilation of LanLan into American culture.
Read All 5 Book Reviews of "The Love Wife Vintage Contemporaries"


Genres: