A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

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 writer's block, Tan's attempts to write her first novel are faltering. And so she embarks instead on a memoir, sparking a lively dialogue with old friends as they search their memories to examine what each one recalls and why. Was it really a dinner-table game that revealed her parents were on the brink of divorce? And was her aunt's shower curtain really made up of raincoats?

Soon, her work-in-progress starts to acquire a life of its own, gradually eclipsing the past and replacing it with something new. After Tan has put her story into a metaphorical oven, what emerges is not a faithful record of the past, but a freshly baked creation forged from memory, imagination and desire.

Moving between past and present, childhood and adulthood, self and others, A PERFECT DAY TO PUT YOUR HEAD IN THE OVEN humorously transforms a personal search for truth into a surprising meditation on our human desire to make sense of our lives.