A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

★ Taiwan Literature Award — Grand Prize
★ Taipei International Book Exhibition Award — Novel Category First Prize
★ Openbook Good Book Award — Annual Chinese Creation

Taiwanese author Jia-Ying Li has achieved a full sweep of prestigious literary awards with her successive Chinese creative works. This memoir, which hunts down elementary school classmates and confronts the memories of others, conceals a novel that unearths the secrets of growing up—an attempt to preserve those moments we seal away into eternity.


American poet Sylvia Plath put her head in an oven, ending her story.
But where does Ah Dan's story begin?

In the fourth grade, she was ostracized by the class's "Children's Club" for being "too friendly with boys" and "too proud"; from birth, her mother spoke every word to her except baby talk; during a game of "Liar" at dinner, her parents, who had never argued, suddenly announced their divorce; during the summer after elementary school graduation, she lay alone on the living room floor, waiting for time to pass; when she moved into a girls' dormitory in junior high, she saw hickeys and smelled lovely scents; at thirteen, she met twenty-five-year-old He Wei-Guang…

Is it a memoir, writing notes, or a novel? Ah Dan has caught a ghost and put it on the tip of her pen, capable of transmitting. Yet, any image, sound, text, or broad record is an illusion of sealing the present into eternity; once the idea of immortality takes hold, everyone must enter the oven!

Jia-Ying Li, a legendary figure in the literary world, returns after sixteen years with a new novel following "Unbarkable," "47 Drifters," and "Tiny Bits of Meat." It wraps a coming-of-age story in sharp, lively language, striking at the essence of writing. Through the protagonist Ah Dan, who temporarily abandons novel writing to pen a memoir after growing up, the book reflects the contradiction between memory and writing from her fifteen-year-old life.

Whether it's youthful idol worship or the vibrant, lovable parts of a world that feels abandoned, they are all covered and devoured in the act of recording. When memory and text intertwine, in the layered narrative, those attempted stories remain incredibly good to hear, and are about to reveal their meaning.