SWEET MANDARIN

Liz Sutherland tells the true story of three generations of Chinese women as they move from the Chinese countryside to Hong Kong to England. The unifying themes are food and female independence. Tse’s book is charming in tone, and Sutherland brings just the right touch to the reading. She varies the pacing effectively and adds emphasis at just the right points as the book moves back and forth between the present and the past. Sutherland's narration makes the shifts clear without affectation. The only drawback to the CDs (and it's small) is that discs end in the middle of paragraphs. This is a hard book to turn off. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2008]