Fortunately, this does not mar the real ending, for which Tan's superb storytelling has amply prepared us. We have seen all along how the dead return, not to bear ancestral curses but to act as the writer's muse. In the final pages, Ruth looks at a photograph of her grandmother. Through it, ''she can see from the past clear into the present. . . . And side by side, Ruth and her grandmother begin.
Words flow. . . .
She teaches writing at Vassar College.