Rating: 
Summary: Amy Tan in her own voice
Review: "The Opposite of Fate" is a collection of musings that cover the many facets of Amy Tan's life, career, and philosophies. The book runs the gamut from a library contest entry written when she was eight to articles and lectures about her current life as a writer. These essays are quite personal, honest, and told with humor and amazing insight. Tan reminisces on her childhood and the clash of Chinese fate and Christian faith in her upbringing. She provides many details about her family, especially her relationship with her mother. She also talks about the loss of both her father and brother to brain cancer the same year, as well as the deaths of several close friends. She describes her harrowing experience with Lyme's disease. She talks with amusement about doctoral dissertations and Cliff's Notes that analyze her work. She discusses what it means to be classified as an Asian-American writer, and how it feels to be a literary celebrity. She recounts her experiences in the literary rock band "The Rock Bottom Remainders." I listened to the audio version of this book, which was read by Amy Tan herself. Since this collection let me peek into the author's triumphs, tragedies, hopes, and fears, it was very effective to hear the essays read in her own voice. After reading this book, you will better understand the elements that make up the author's stories, such as the echoes of her mother's influence in the novels' mother-daughter relationships. I recommend this book for every Amy Tan fan. It may provide enough insight on the real Amy Tan so that you'll want to reread some of her novels. Eileen Rieback
Rating: 
Summary: The Opposite of Fiction
Review: Although I read only the rare novel, I really love it when a novelist tries her hand at non-fiction. Fiction writers turn everything into stories. The essays and memories in The Opposite of Fate read like short stories, with the pacing and structure of fiction. This is not a memoir, rather a collection of thoughts, essays, interviews, memories, even a prize-winning essay Amy Tan wrote when she was eight years old. The pieces at the beginning of the book are more light-hearted than the later ones. In one, Tan is surprised to find that Joy Luck Club has a CliffNotes version and is interested to discover what she was trying to say in her novel. Not only that, the CliffNotes biography doesn't quite match what she recalls from her own life. In another chapter, Tan tells how she became a bad singer in the Rock Bottom Remainders, a bad band. Her story of how Joy Luck Club was made into a movie is fascinating. There is a lot about Tan's mother, a huge influence in her life, both good and bad. When Tan turns serious, watch out. She has had several brushes with death, and her September 11 memories are out of the ordinary, as well. She also writes about how she came to be a writer and have her first novel published at thirty-seven. Most of these pieces are quickly read, and only one or two seem seemed too long. I am embarrassed to say that I have not read the novels of Amy Tan, but having finished this very enjoyable "Book of Musings," I look forward to getting her other books right away.
Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful and fun read
Review: I just finished reading this book and really it is very different from any other Amy Tam work. Her voice is so explicitly loud and funny that this book is worth your time even if your aren't a major Amy Tan fan. All the way through she will challenge you to think about writing and life in different ways. As a special bonus, I think I gained alot of insight into her earlier works that casts them in a different light for me.
Rating:
Summary: Fate and Faith...interesting analogy.
Review: I started reading this book because I thought it would be one of her fictions, but it's not. I kept on reading it and I was happy to discover that Tan and I come from the same elements of familial woes. It was strangely pleasant because I felt like part of my own life was unfolding in this book. She gives vivid descriptions of her life: why she writes, her early fascination with Nabokov, her own views on being classified as an "Asian American" writer, her torrid relationship with her mother, the deaths of her brother, father, and friend, etc. Amy Tan was recently diagnosed with Lyme's disease, a neurological ailment caused by nymph ticks. She talks about finding hope in the deeper self, even though her whole immediate family has been haunted and devoured by neurological illnesses (brain tumors, Alzheimer's). All in all, I think this book offers an introduction to Amy Tan as a writer, as an individual. And I find the "mystical" and coincidental ways in which some of her works come to being particularly intriguing, or perhaps contrived (?). It will not take you long though, to discover that she uses melodrama in a morbid, but titillating way.
The book touches all sorts of subjects. From fear and faith, to fate and mortality. It candidly corrects the misconceptions and assumptions that have been seculated by the media and become part of Tan's "unofficial biography", as she terms it.
Of all readers, I think that this book will be appreciated by her truest and most loyal fans. In this book of "musings", Tan is explaining and uncovering her personality as a writer...as if to let her own beloved readers know who she really is.
The only reason that I give this book four stars is because three or four of the sections in this book made me want to sleep. They were somewhat slow and boring, which is really not rare in such books that try to touch on every single topic. I also felt like Tan could have made her sentences a little more colorful, and embellished some of her paragraphs in some of the sections. It was a good job otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Setting the Record Straight on Amy Tan
Review: I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and not just writers, women, North Americans with Asian heritage or people with any such specific demographics. A charming and well-written book that is true to the memoir genre where you get to know the author rather than the events of his/her life. There are enough interesting stories from Ms Tan's past, especially the cultural and cross-cultural ones - the former involving her Chinese ancestry and the latter involving her American and Chinese heritage. The reader knows plenty about the events of her life, but only the ones which matter to her, which, ultimately, are the ones that really matter in getting to know someone. However, Ms Tan's goal and focus was to set the record straight on Amy Tan, what she's like and where she stands on many issues, and that she did. There are many enlightening essays with Ms Tan's views and questions on a variety of interesting topics, with notes on how they've impacted her life. The writing style, vocabulary and organization of stories are very typical and symbolic of Ms Tan's ways. I feel like I partly know her now, as in having a feel of the gist of what she is like, how she thinks and sees the world, and that I would find her very amiable if I met her. I only wish every memoir could tell me as much about the writer. PS If you are writing essays on Ms Tan's books and/or her, take her adviace and avoid using Cliff's Notes. Cliff never met her. Net sources are even worse!
Rating:
Summary: So I haven't finished it yet, but so far so good!
Review: If you're an Amy Tan fan (as am I), you'll love this humorous and touching book. So far, I've read about her friend's death, the inspiration for several books, her family history, her take on CliffNotes and more. I love every second of it. Amy is a writer that I can relate to and learn from. The voice that appears in her novels is consistant with the one in this book.
For those of you who are waiting her next work of fiction, there are bits of nonfiction stories throughout this book that will take care of any "fix" you might need until the next one arrives.
Rating:
Summary: Being Amy Tan
Review: This book strives to show the reader the inner workings of a beloved writer who has turned her life's problems, joys, and insights in the creative works of fiction. Though her books often seem nonfiction in many respects, she continually assures the reader that they are indeed fiction, even if the only true fiction elements are invented aunts and uncles.
I enjoyed this book thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone who likes Tan's novels. She has a self-deprecating humor in this work, which carries the reader through; she is as humble as the average reader--believing she is neither great, nor a fraud.
The stories of her life before her first novel are the most engaging, but I believe she is trying to teach readers something more than how to overcome trials and tribulations. She is attempting to show that we all grow continually and make choices that steer us where we wish to go.
Rating:
Summary: The Opposite of Fate
Review: This is Amy Tan at her best... Her own life is much more interesting than her fiction!
I enjoyed hearing her own point of view as she described the motivation for writing her various novels. Each one is based on a real experience in her life. Her family, especially her relationship to her mother, is simply fascinating and the way she crafts her words is so poetic. I am now inspired to read all of her other fictional books!
Rating:
Summary: Your Life May Depend on It
Review: This nonfiction book is an interesting collection of essays and musings about Amy Tan, written by Amy Tan, the author of four best selling novels. Organized into seven sections beginning with "Fate and Faith" and concluding with "Hope," the collection is in roughly chronological order. To enjoy the thread of this work, the reader should note those section titles and keep them in mind while reading. I am not a fan of Amy Tan's fiction. "The Bonesetter's Daughter" could not sustain my interest and I have an uncertain memory of giving up on "The Joy Luck Club" as well. Although both books peaked at number four on the USA Today's bestseller list, I've yet to develop a taste for their themes. I began reading "The Opposite of Fate" with a tinge of obligation because it was a gift from a good friend, and continued reading with dedicated interest to the end. Being an aspiring novelist, I was in part curious about the trials and tribulations of an accomplished writer of fiction, and this book has a wealth of singular anecdotes and insights. But there is much more, principally Amy Tan's tenacious sprightliness in spite of tragedies, deaths and diseases, bad luck and ill fate, always clinging to the opposite of fate. There are lessons in the Chinese-American philosophical, the multiple perspectives of truth, the management of memories and the indestructibility of mother-daughter love. In the chapter "Angst and the Second Book," Amy Tan discusses her determination to overcome the axiom that the second book is doomed no matter what the author does, but she does not mention how well her second novel did. In fact, of her four novels, her second, "The Kitchen God's Wife," faired the poorest, peaking at the 94th position in USA Today's bestseller list, and stayed on the chart for only five weeks. Interestingly though, her first book, "The Joy Luck Club," and the second novel entered USA Today's list on the same date, October 28, 1993. Regardless of your interests, the final chapter of this book describing the advent and of a prolonged illness and its eventual diagnosis is essential reading. Your life could depend on it.
Rating:
Summary: Your Life May Depend on It
Review: This nonfiction book is an interesting collection of essays and musings about Amy Tan, written by Amy Tan, the author of four best selling novels. Organized into seven sections beginning with "Fate and Faith" and concluding with "Hope," the collection is in roughly chronological order. To enjoy the thread of this work, the reader should note those section titles and keep them in mind while reading. I am not a fan of Amy Tan's fiction. "The Bonesetter's Daughter" could not sustain my interest and I have an uncertain memory of giving up on "The Joy Luck Club" as well. Although both books peaked at number four on the USA Today's bestseller list, I've yet to develop a taste for their themes. I began reading "The Opposite of Fate" with a tinge of obligation because it was a gift from a good friend, and continued reading with dedicated interest to the end. Being an aspiring novelist, I was in part curious about the trials and tribulations of an accomplished writer of fiction, and this book has a wealth of singular anecdotes and insights. But there is much more, principally Amy Tan's tenacious sprightliness in spite of tragedies, deaths and diseases, bad luck and ill fate, always clinging to the opposite of fate. There are lessons in the Chinese-American philosophical, the multiple perspectives of truth, the management of memories and the indestructibility of mother-daughter love. In the chapter "Angst and the Second Book," Amy Tan discusses her determination to overcome the axiom that the second book is doomed no matter what the author does, but she does not mention how well her second novel did. In fact, of her four novels, her second, "The Kitchen God's Wife," faired the poorest, peaking at the 94th position in USA Today's bestseller list, and stayed on the chart for only five weeks. Interestingly though, her first book, "The Joy Luck Club," and the second novel entered USA Today's list on the same date, October 28, 1993. Regardless of your interests, the final chapter of this book describing the advent and of a prolonged illness and its eventual diagnosis is essential reading. Your life could depend on it.
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