Firewife

by Tinling Choong

Book Overview

An original, courageous novel, FireWife draws on the powerful Chinese myth of fire and water to explore how women's sexuality and fate are intertwined. Nin, a photographer, embarks on a five-month... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385516452
• ISBN13: 9780385516457
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Exhilarating!

Choong's writing is vivid and refreshing. Reading this book is about taking a trip through time, different personas, distant lands, lifetimes... and yet the themes resonate with every woman. Unlike many books by Asian/Asian American authors, the characters' narratives are direct, sexual, often shocking -not the quiet, suffering Asian women variety. I throughly enjoyed it!

Beautifully Rendered Voices

I married a wonderful Chinese woman who does not hesitate to remind me (when necessary) that she is a dragon of the element fire. So when I saw a little book entitled Fire Wife, there wasn't much chance I would pass it up. To be honest, I don't always connect with books that are grounded in Eastern mysticism. I'm not a big believer in the cyclic, fateful view of the world that is at the heart of many Eastern beliefs. And I certainly don't have the ingrained feel for it like my wife has. However, this book has the advantage of being bold in its use of these themes, unlike many other books that use them more subtly, where they seem out of place. The general plot of this book is that Nin, an architect for a international restaurant chain, takes a leave of absence from her job so she can pursue photography. As she travels, she encounters different women, who tell their stories as Nin takes their pictures. Each woman has a unique voice and tells her story well. But this book is really about the higher, more spiritual encounters that take place and, ultimately, how they impact us. I can't claim to be completely won over by this book. I am too far from the world she is trying to render. Still, it is beautifully written and brief enough that I didn't regret the experience. I would have gotten more from the story, perhaps, if the "prologue, misplaced" had appeared in its proper place since it clarified things for me, but why quibble? It tells its story well.

Tinling Choong Gives a Voice to the Silent

In her fictional work, FireWife, Tinling Choong writes in a wide variety of voices. In one part she reveals the squirming stillness of a woman who lies naked on the floor, serving as a sushi table for the Japanese businessmen who surround her. Choong dives into the thoughts of a Bankok prostitute celebrating her fourteenth birthday with a fly, who is boxed in the window with her. Some of the women are living with deep control, others explode into flames, once literally. Tying their lives together is Nin, who travels the globe to photograph women and to discover her true self, as a woman made up entirely of fire who is living the life of water. Fire is adventurous, masculine, sexual. Water is placid, accepting, a homebody. She spends days on planes going through sometimes hilarious machinations as she attempts to explore her soul without self-emolating. Nin spends 1/25th of a second with the various women, whom Choong then brings to life for the reader. As a result, at the end of Nin's journey, I felt I had more insight than she did into her genius in finding women who needed to be recognized. I also felt like a voyeur, seeing deeply into the psyches of those Nin had merely captured as an aesthetically interesting snapshot. What I especially love about this book is that Choong gives a voice to those we never hear about, that we only know about through Ashley Judd's travels exposing the horrors of sex workers, or through a hint that businessmen traveling to Bankok also can indulge in old-fashioned flesh pots that only hire girls barely out of puberty. I know of the sushi table from a T-shirt a student wore to class. (I have since banned offensive t-shirts.) But my reactions--Oh the poor child prostitute! Oh the hapless naked sushi table!--are from a distance. I feel now my sympathy has depth to it and that I know them as no longer "them", but "us". Choong can write these different voices because her own is so literary and varied, being distinctively staccato at points, arching at others. If you love language, if you love exploring ideas about reincarnation and living in the truth, and if you love diving into another's mind, you're really going to love FireWife.