SOURCE: "The Second Time Around," in Women's Review of Books, Vol. VIII, No. 12, September, 1991, pp. 1, 3.

In the following review, Yglesias delineates the reasons that Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife may surpass the success of her The Joy Luck Club.

Amy Tan is an immensely popular writer. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, was a knockout success, and her second is well on its way to equal, if not surpass, it. The readers who loved the first will surely love the second, since both tell the same story—and this time around Tan has executed the work better in conception, in design, in detail and in sheer pleasure for the reader.

If this sounds like criticism in the guise of praise, it is not. Amy Tan commands an intriguing style which, along with her highly special subject matter, makes for a unique contribution to contemporary writing. The Joy...