Chia-Ying, Lee - A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

Faced with writer’s block, Tan abandons her first novel and decides to write a memoir instead. As she revisits her youth, she begins comparing memories with old friends. Was it really a dinner-table game that revealed her parents were on the brink of divorce? Was her aunt’s shower curtain actually made from raincoats? And if everyone remembers the past differently, whose version can she trust?Then something stranger happens. Tan’s memoir begins to acquire a life of its own, gradually replacing the past with something new. What emerges from the metaphorical oven is no longer a faithful record, but a freshly baked creation made from memory, imagination and desire. Tender and genre-defying, A PERFECT DAY TO PUT YOUR HEAD IN THE OVEN asks what happens when the stories we tell about our lives become more powerful than the truth.