Simple Recipes
Authors: Madeleine Thien
simple recipes
“Simple Recipes
introduces a writer of precocious poise…. The austere grace and polished assurance of Thien’s prose are remarkable…. She
has a way with the small, quiet image that sums up an inexpressible ache…. Her stories are peopled by fractured families;
her characters are suffused with a kind of bewildered longing for domestic harmony…. The trajectories of Thien’s stories are
unpredictable; though her characters dream of following simple recipes, they are themselves undeniably original creations.”
— Janice P. Nimura,
New York Times Book Review
“A sense of longing, and then of rupture, characterizes these delicate stories from a thrillingly gifted new writer. I hope
we will hear a great deal more from Madeleine Thien.”
— Anita Shreve, author of
The Pilot’s Wife
and
Sea Glass
“Excellent and wrenching…. Thien’s first collection exhibits a very Alice Munro—like combination of delicacy and gravity….
In graceful counterbalance to the restraint of her prose, Thien’s portraits of these painful, guilt-ridden, love-drenched
relationships are remarkably rich.”
— Donna Rifkind,
Baltimore Sun
“A fine collection…. Thien shows a rare, measured, and perceptive understanding…. Families, we are often told, are the basic
building block of society. Rarely is the subject treated with the wisdom and open-eyed compassion that Thien displays here.”
— Martin Wallace,
National Post
“The stoic Canadian women who narrate Thien’s graceful stories of working-class families gone awry have a way of quietly bringing
the reader face to face with astonishing moments of parental cruelty, neglect, or, worst of all, indifference. It’s as if
these women have no reason not to be heartbreakingly low-key about childhoods spent in foster care, dealing with flaky moms,
or warding off sexual abuse…. Her delicate prose turns out to be surprisingly resilient, holding these weighty familial betrayals
aloft as if it were a luminous safety net.”
— Mark Rozzo,
Los Angeles Times
“A dazzling debut…. The young women in
Simple Recipes
find their homes shaken by cultural and generational differences…. A reminder that home is not always necessarily where the
heart is.”
— Megan O’Grady and Valerie Steiker,
Vogue
“At 27, this promising young writer demonstrates a knack for characterization that makes the buzz surrounding her spare, rhapsodic
prose understandable — and well deserved.”
— Mimi Kriegsman,
Time Out New York
“A polished, remarkable debut…. Thien’s stories unfold with the complexity of life, rather than the predictability of fiction….
A tour de force of storytelling.”
— Robert J. Wiersema,
Vancouver Sun
“Richly layered stories…. A lovely, composed sorrowfulness pervades Thien’s delicate yet powerful debut. Her characters, each
struggling with a burden of love, fear, and guilt, revisit their pasts looking for clues that might free their present selves.”
— Sarah Gianelli,
Portland Oregonian
“Thien’s wistful stories are universal explorations of family and yearning…. Their strength lies in the way she captures the
distorted perspective of childhood and the confusion that accompanies the coming of age.”
— Robert Weibezahl,
Bookpage
“Powerful…. A graceful debut collection…. The simplicity of Thien’s narration belies the complexity of her themes. She is
a writer to watch.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A deft and mesmerizing feat…. Thien writes clearly and sparingly about all the muddy complexities of human connection; her
words are so perfect and transparent that everything behind them is visible. They are like the whisper that stills a busy
room.”
— Jeanie MacFarlane,
Toronto Star
“In finely crafted, crystal-clear prose, Thien demonstrates what it is to face loss…. We come away with a wiser understanding
of ‘the human condition.’ Could more be asked of an author?”
— Bill Robinson,
MostlyFiction.com
“Thien’s writing is sparse and clean and often works on many levels. When she describes a father’s ritual of washing and cooking
rice you know there is a life lesson there. These stories are heartbreaking.”
— Ginny Merdes,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Seven spare, eloquent tales of family ties that fray but don’t break…. Rich in detail, with memory serving to acknowledge
complexity and to preserve what would otherwise be lost…. Truthful and suffused with quiet ache: a welcome collection.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Thien joins the proud Canadian tradition led by Alice Munro, mining the territory of family dynamics and legacies with bold
awareness and poetic delicacy. Parents and children, men and women, move toward and away from one another as they weather
the various dysfunctions and heartbreaks of life, and then slowly, over time, turn guilt or anger into understanding, even
acceptance…. These wise and richly wrought stories are a gem of a read.”
—Beth Taylor,
Providence Journal
Copyright © 2001 by Madeleine Thien
Reading group guide copyright © 2003 by Madeleine Thien and Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)
Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
The epigraph on page vii is taken from
Water Memory
by Roo Borson (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd.). Copyright © 1996 by Roo Borson. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. The conversation with Madeleine Thien reprinted in the reading group guide first appeared at
www.FictionAddiction.net
, copyright © 2002.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-08713-1
This book is for my family, with love.
A house is a simple construct.
The builders die, but it goes on.
And still every childhood matters,
like mint grown in the shade,
all translation is painstaking,
and has no natural melody.
The world may be old,
but even then it was old,
without end or beginning.
— Roo Borson,
from “Milk”
Contents
Questions and Topics for Discussion
T
here is a simple recipe for making rice. My father taught it to me when I was a child. Back then, I used to sit up on the
kitchen counter watching him, how he sifted the grains in his hands, sure and quick, removing pieces of dirt or sand, tiny
imperfections. He swirled his hands through the water and it turned cloudy. When he scrubbed the grains clean, the sound was
as big as a field of insects. Over and over, my father rinsed the rice, drained the water, then filled the pot again.
The instructions are simple. Once the washing is done, you measure the water this way — by resting the tip of your index finger
on the surface of the rice. The water should reach the bend of your first knuckle.
My father did not need instructions or measuring cups. He closed his eyes and felt for the waterline.
Sometimes I still dream my father, his bare feet flat against the floor, standing in the middle of the kitchen. He wears old
buttoned shirts and faded sweatpants drawn at the waist. Surrounded by the gloss of the kitchen counters, the sharp angles
of the stove, the fridge, the shiny sink, he looks out of place. This memory of him is so strong, sometimes it stuns me, the
detail with which I can see it.
Every night before dinner, my father would perform this ritual — rinsing and draining, then setting the pot in the cooker.
When I was older, he passed this task on to me but I never did it with the same care. I went through the motions, splashing
the water around, jabbing my finger down to measure the water level. Some nights the rice was a mushy gruel. I worried that
I could not do so simple a task right. “Sorry,” I would say to the table, my voice soft and embarrassed. In answer, my father
would keep eating, pushing the rice into his mouth as if he never expected anything different, as if he noticed no difference
between what he did so well and I so poorly. He would eat every last mouthful, his chopsticks walking quickly across the plate.
Then he would rise, whistling, and clear the table, every motion so clean and sure, I would be convinced by him that all was
well in the world.
My father is standing in the middle of the kitchen. In his right hand he holds a plastic bag filled with water. Caught inside
the bag is a live fish.
The fish is barely breathing, though its mouth opens and closes. I reach up and touch it through the plastic bag, trailing
my fingers along the gills, the soft, muscled body, pushing my finger overtop the eyeball. The fish looks straight at me,
flopping sluggishly from side to side.
My father fills the kitchen sink. In one swift motion he overturns the bag and the fish comes sailing out with the water.
It curls and jumps. We watch it closely, me on my tiptoes, chin propped up on the counter. The fish is the length of my arm
from wrist to elbow. It floats in place, brushing up against the sides of the sink.
I keep watch over the fish while my father begins the preparations for dinner. The fish folds its body, trying to turn or
swim, the water nudging overtop. Though I ripple tiny circles around it with my fingers, the fish stays still, bobbing side
to side in the cold water.
For many hours at a time, it was just the two of us. While my mother worked and my older brother
played outside, my father and I sat on the couch, flipping channels. He loved cooking shows. We watched
Wok with Yan,
my father passing judgement on Yan’s methods. I was enthralled when Yan transformed orange peels into swans. My father sniffed.
“I can do that,” he said. “You don’t have to be a genius to do that.” He placed a sprig of green onion in water and showed
me how it bloomed like a flower. “I know many tricks like this,” he said. “Much more than Yan.”