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A Novel
by Geling Yan
A woman reclaims her own story in this taut and wholly original literary tale from one of China's literary superstars.
Hongmei is the perfect Chinese wife: beautiful, diligent, passive. Glen is the perfect American husband: intelligent, caring, well-off. From the outside, Hongmei and Glen's life in the San Francisco Bay Area seems perfect. But at home, their marriage is falling apart. Post-its left on the fridge are their primary form of communication.
When Hongmei receives a beguiling email from a secret admirer, naturally she's intrigued. But what starts out as harmless flirting with an internet stranger quickly turns into an all-consuming emotional affair. As Hongmei spills more and more about her dark past as a military intelligence officer-in-training in China, she falls deeper and deeper into a tense cat-and-mouse game. Desperate and self-destructive, she embarks on an investigation into her emailer's secret history…one that may tear her life and marriage apart forever.
A psychological story at its core, The Secret Talker elegantly examines how repressed desire and simmering silence can upend even the most idyllic marriage. As Hongmei pursues her stalker, her identity and agency come into question, and the chase curveballs into a captivating journey of self-actualization. Yan Geling pierces the human psyche to reveal devastating and emotional truths – and an ending that will leave readers speechless.
"A riveting tale of suspense... . Yan's pacing is impeccable as she delicately but inexorably builds toward a thought-provoking finale. Readers of tense literary fiction will find much to like." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The Secret Talker bring[s] the mood of an existential novel to a hair-raising thriller. Yan is a fan of stories where interlopers disrupt stable relationships — among her screenplay credits is an adaptation of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses.' But she also sees a third party as a way to patch a fractured relationship. 'Whatever roles human beings played by day, if they didn't have a moment like this when they could reveal themselves, they'd surely be driven mad,' Yan writes. And her hero is intriguingly close to that edge." —Washington Post
This information about The Secret Talker was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Geling Yan was Born in Shanghai and served with the People's Liberation
Army during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age 12 as a dancer in an
entertainment troupe.
After serving for over a decade (including tours in Tibet and as a war
correspondent during the Sino-Vietnam border conflict), she was discharged with
a rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. She published her first novel in 1985
and ever since has produced a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas,
essays and scripts. Her best-known novels in English are The Banquet Bug (The
Uninvited in its UK edition - written directly in English) and The Lost Daughter
of Happiness, (translated by Cathy Silber) both published by Hyperion in the US
and Faber & Faber in the UK. She has also published a ...
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...
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