A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

Tan’s attempt to write her first novel, A Clueless Man Shakes His Thump-Thumping Head, is not going well. She tries to write a memoir instead, but this involves checking her own memories against her parents and old classmates, who are surprised to hear from her after all these years. “Are you dying?” asks one perplexed friend.

Tan is not dying, but she does want to figure out how many of her own highly curious memories from childhood are accurate: the guessing game played on the day her parents announced their divorce, a kissing ritual among boarding school roommates, the life-affirming meditation triggered by a piece of spinach flailing in a sink. Threading together Tan’s memories and conversations with mordant humor, Lee Chia-Ying dramatizes the hilarity and horrors of being a young person.