A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

MULTIPLE INTERNATIONAL AWARDS WINNER
Translated by Lin King, translator of TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE

Reader love for A PERFECT DAY TO PUT YOUR HEAD IN THE OVEN
***** ‘Reading this made me fly back to my own past’
***** ‘I enjoyed its tenderness. Like the protagonist at the end, I felt warmth float into my eyes’
***** ‘Interesting and philosophical. This cleverly considers the differences between fiction and reality’
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A genre-defying novel from a rare new international voice for fans of Lucia Berlin, Elena Ferrante and Han Kang as a writer gives up on fiction to explore the truth of her own youth.

Faced with a blank page, Tan’s attempt to come up with her first novel is faltering. She embarks instead on her memoir, sparking a lively dialogue with old friends as they delve into memory to examine what each one remembers and why.

As Tan dives back into her emotional past, the truth of her recollections is questioned: the dinner table guessing game that disclosed her parents were on the brink of divorce; a kissing ritual among friends; her life-affirming dream triggered by a piece of spinach at the bottom of a sink. Weaving Tan’s experience of writing with the writing itself, Lee Chia-Ying reveals the universal hilarity and horror of youth, and how it becomes so drastically warped by time.

An addictive double tale of past and present, childhood and maturity, self and other people, A PERFECT DAY inspires the reader to reflect on the shifting stories we tell ourselves and all the unexpected ways in which memory tricks and shapes our lives.
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'A gorgeous, surprising and deeply intelligent book. I read it rapt and awestruck' Claire Vaye Watkins
***** ‘A book to read over and over’
***** ‘This is not only a process of "memory reconstruction," but also a dialectic of "fiction vs. reality"’
***** ‘Its words are like a whirlpool, pulling me back to my teenage years’