Soy sauce for beginners

250 pages

English language

Published May 12, 2014

ISBN:
978-0-544-11439-5
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OCLC Number:
875632618

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4 stars (2 reviews)

Gretchen Lin leaves behind a floundering marriage to return to her Singapore home, where she confronts the challenges of her mother's alcoholism and her father's artisanal soy sauce business before being pulled into a family controversy.

2 editions

Review of 'Soy sauce for beginners' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

In Gretchen Lin's Singapore circle of friends and family it is important to have a great career and/or to have married well. For Gretchen to move back to Singapore in the midst of a divorce and having not finished her latest degree is to admit failure.It doesn't help that she is given a token job in her family's soy sauce factory as it is going through upheaval. The company was founded by her grandfather to make high quality fermented soy sauce in small batches. Now her cousin and uncle are trying to speed up the process because most people don't know the difference between quality soy sauce and the cheap stuff. A rift is brewing in the company.Gretchen's mother is an alcoholic whose drinking problem has never been talked about. Now she is on dialysis and ignoring her drinking is killing her.Gretchen's response to all this is to hide herself …

avatar for xianny

rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • Asian American women
  • Soy sauce industry
  • Fiction
  • Americans
  • Family-owned business enterprises

Places

  • Singapore