SOURCE: "Ghost Story," in New York Times Book Review, October 29, 1995, p. 11.

In the following review, Messud praises the characterization of Kwan in Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses, but says that the novel fails to convince.

The tremendous success of Amy Tan's two previous novels, The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife, lay in her capacity to evoke, vividly and with subtle humor, the cultural dislocation of America's Chinese community. She has conjured the tortuous lives of an older generation of women whose fate brought them from China to this country, as well as the frustration and fascination of their American-born daughters. It is not surprising, then, that in her latest book, The Hundred Secret Senses, she should offer an apparent reworking of this theme.

However, rather than focusing again on the mother-daughter bond, Ms. Tan has shifted her attention slightly, choosing this time an exploration of...