Man, Kim Thuy
Man, Kim Thuy
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Mãn

Author: Kim Thúy

Narrator: Kim Thúy

Unabridged: 3 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/10/2018


Synopsis

Following on the Giller Prize-nominated and Governor General's Literary Award-winning success of Ru, Kim Thúy's latest novel is a triumph of poetic beauty and a moving meditation on how love and food are inextricably entwined.
          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.

About The Author

Born in Saigon in 1968, KIM THÚY left Vietnam with the boat people at the age of ten and settled with her family in Quebec. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, restaurant owner, and commentator on radio and television. She lives in Montreal and devotes herself to writing.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on November 02, 2011

Thoroughly impressed by Stoker’s writing in Dracula, I wanted to see how it carried over in work of a different sort. This book, rarely reviewed or described online, seemed a good choice where nobody else’s perceptions influenced mine. We meet lovely teenager Stephen (her father wanted a boy…) and H......more

Goodreads review by blake on November 09, 2021

Stoker finally nails the ending! The previous eight books have suffered from varying degrees of "monster's dead, movie's over" (the closest exception being The Snake's Pass) and here, on his ninth novel with only two more left to go (excluding LotWW) he finally manages to give the denouement an appr......more

Goodreads review by Frank on October 26, 2017

The Man by Bram Stoker is a Gothic romance that follows the life of Stephen Norman, the daughter of Squire Stephen Norman, the lord of the manor in Normanstead. Margaret Rowly marries Squire Stephen whom they raise as a tomboy, as the squire had always wanted a male a heir. Margaret dies, but the sq......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on December 30, 2015

Calling this "a rare novel of fear" is a bit misleading: there are some tense moments, but not enough to qualify the book as a mystery or even really a thriller. It's a bit of a hybrid work, falling more on the side of Stoker's romances (like The Snake's Pass and Lady Athelyne) but even then not qui......more

Goodreads review by EB on October 07, 2014

Surprisingly good.......more


Quotes

Praise for Mãn:
"This slim, wondrous book tells a story of love, food, passion and life rooted between worlds." Maclean's
"A delicate and vital love story.... The writing is both heartbreaking and insistent." Toronto Star
"A story that is ageless and universal, and exquisitely told." Winnipeg Free Press