Mãn
Kim Thúy
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars
3.75
· 16 ratings · 162 pages · Published: 08 Apr 2005
Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mãn a husband--a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal.
Thrown into a new world, Mãn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: they evoke memory and emotion, time and place, and even bring her customers to tears.
Mãn is a mystery--her name means "perfect fulfillment," yet she and her husband seem to drift along, respectfully and dutifully. But when she encounters a married chef in Paris, everything changes in the instant of a fleeting touch, and Mãn discovers the all-encompassing obsession and ever-present dangers of a love affair.
Full of indelible images of beauty, delicacy and quiet power, Mãn is a novel that begs to be savoured for its language, its sensuousness and its love of life.
Tagged as:
- romance 4
- contemporary 3
- literary fiction 3
- protagonists of colour 3
- family 3
- historical fiction 2
- on the move 2
- war/big battles 2
- friendship 2
- female mc 1
- magical realism 1
- action / adventure 1
- military, war & conflict 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- audiobook 2
- anthology 1
- adult fiction 1