Simple Recipes: Stories - Couverture souple

“This is surely the debut of a splendid writer. I am astonished by the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity.”
–Alice Munro

“Thien’s stories are universes on their own, rich and multi-faceted....She has an uncanny ability to confound expectations at every turn....A tour de force of storytelling....”
–Vancouver Sun

“Madeleine Thien writes with a diamond on glass. Her stories are windows between worlds: childhood and adulthood, east and west, love and loss....A poised, glittering debut.”
–Annabel Lyon, author of Oxygen

“Thien shows a rare, measured and perceptive understanding....”
–National Post

“A deft and mesmerizing feat....”
–Toronto Star

“She packs her deceptively straightforward short stories with raw emotional power.”
–Time

“[A] graceful debut collection....Powerful....The simplicity of Thien’s narration belies the complexity of her themes. She is a writer to watch.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Dazzling....”
–Vogue

“Simple Recipes exhibits a very 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.”
–Baltimore Sun

“Simple Recipes offers wise and tender tales about families that are both united and strained beyond their limits by cultural and generational differences....Thien weaves dark magic....”
–Elle

“Stunning in its authority, in its orchestration of the silences and omissions that are the true language of our world, Madeleine Thien’s collection of stories accomplishes what all fine writing strives to accomplish but rarely does: It reveals us to ourselves with such sudden and irresistible precision, such appalling tenderness, that we are, however briefly, transformed by the experience, forced to recognize ourselves in a new light. Hers is a powerful new voice in fiction.”
–Mark Slouka, author of God’s Fool and Lost Lake

“Madeleine Thien’s sure-footed stories have a quiet elegance to them, but their emotional centres are packed tight. Her prose is as clear as consommé and her characters emerge out of it raw and human. It’s a wonderful debut.”
–Michael Redhill, author of Martin Sloane

“These are stories deep with longing, a genuine consolation of the private griefs of human beings who find themselves, quite by accident, joined in families. Thien has a real talent for moulding the immense chaotic universe of emotions into something perfectly rounded, a small, startling jewel you can hold in the centre of your palm.”
–Elyse Gasco, author of Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby?

“Madeleine Thien’s got the real stuff – integrity, deadly timing, and a truly original voice.”
–Erika Krouse, author of Come Up and See Me Sometime

Winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the City of Vancouver Book Award, and a Regional Finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book

Longing, familiarity, and hope suffuse these stories as they mine the charged territory of relationships – subtly weaving in conflicts between generations and cultures. Madeleine Thien’s characters in some way want to make amends, to understand the events that have shaped their lives. A young woman searches back in time for the pivotal moment when her family lost faith in itself. Two sisters keep a vigil outside their former house, hoping their long-absent mother will appear one last time. A wife helps her husband grieve for the woman he has loved since childhood. A daughter remembers the simple ritual she once shared with her father and the moment when her unconditional love for him was called into question. Compassionate and revealing, delicate and wise, these stories chart the uneven progress of love and lay bare the heartbreaking truths at the core of our closest bonds.