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    The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
    The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
    The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

    Written by Amy Tan

    Narrated by Amy Tan

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Delve into the stories from Amy Tan's life that inspired bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists. Whether recalling arguments with her mother in suburban California or introducing us to the ghosts that inhabit her computer, The Opposite of Fate offers vivid portraits of choices, attitudes, charms, and luck in action--a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we all face today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2016
    ISBN9781501902154
    The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
    Author

    Amy Tan

    Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Saving Fish from Drowning, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which was adapted into a PBS television series. Tan was also a coproducer and coscreenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.

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    Reviews for The Opposite of Fate

    4/5

    343 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A series of touching, incisive and beautifully written essays about writing, family and life.
    • 3/5
      A good overall book about the life and thoughts of Amy Tan. Not her greatest work, but interesting and well-written nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      This is a great way to write your memoirs. Stories about her books and her life are wonderful.
    • 3/5
      This is a book of essays regarding Tan's life and writing process. There are some truly poignant essays about being a writer. Ultimately, though, most of the essays, including "Mother Tongue" (a staple of the Comp. I program at my PhD institution, which inspired mediocre, if not racist, essays from the white students), are just okay.
    • 3/5
      Entertaining, enlightening, and an easy, comfortable read.

      Amy Tan covers every stage of her life, with evocative imagery, people from movie stars (not too much of that) to a sometimes-crazy mother, loss of her brother and father to cancer, her experiences writing her first work and writing for Hollywood.

      She covers her more recent Lyme disease issues and generally gives me the kind of insight and access to her life that Joy Luck Club gave me to her general experience.

      Well worth the read and it reinvigorated my desire to read more of her fiction!
    • 3/5
      A collection of reflections & semi-biographical writings - even better than her fictional memoirs.Read Oct 2006
    • 2/5
      The book is a series of essays/stories throughout her life and about her life and writing. Although the book is extremely well written and has some interesting thoughts in it, I find Amy Tan a little full of herself and pretty pretentious when expressing her views on various subjects. There are also numerous times when she repeats stories (although this is probably because she writes the book in essay style which I didn't particularly care for). Here's a good example of a statement I found ridiculously uptight: "Many writers think sarcasm is a clever way to show intelligence. But more mature writers know that mean-spiritedness is wearying and limited in its one-dimensional point of view." What I don't understand is... since when is sarcasm used SERIOUSLY? Her view of sarcastic writing just doesn't make sense. To make a long story short (unlike the book), I finished it... and didn't struggle through it (unless by struggle you mean... disagree with what is written) and I found that I don't particularly like this writer as a person. I do however think she has a great writing style and she can clearly tell a story. If you can get over her pretentious attitude, then read it.
    • 4/5
      A great collection of essays for fans of Tan's work. One gains an excellent insight into growing with the mother that inspired books about fraught mother-daughter relationships, how a novel comes together, the process of turning a book into a movie, and the lifestyle of a writer. I listened to the audiobook read by the author, which added to the sense of having an informal chat and getting to know her better.
    • 4/5
      Good discussion of the sociopolitical debate facing "minority" writers. Does Amy Tan have a death wish or is she just a cat with 9 lives (she apparently thrives on being a daredevil)?
    • 3/5
      An interesting memoir. It is very detached, like reading a collection of short stories rather than the usual memoir.
    • 5/5
      A truly beautiful book. You could tell from many of Amy Tan's books that she had a turbulent relationship with her mother. These memoirs showed the strong love she had for the strong character who was her mother. I read this book not long after my mother died and was moved and comforted by it.
    • 5/5
      I never read an Amy Tan book before, but I was intrigued by her take on writing and how it works for her. I think I will now check out some of her books as I loved her way with words. It's obvious she loves language and the stories she shared about her life and how she approaches the world and writing was fascinating.
    • 5/5
      Every book I read by Amy Tan grows me from the inside out. I gain such undertanding of my own life through the generous sharing of her own experiences and how they have informed her life, work and art. Reading The Opposite of Fate is like being in the middle of a life transforming conversation.
    • 2/5
      Wonderful memoir of Amy Tan's life and writing, including several pages on what it means to be an Asian-American author and why that's different -- and shouldn't be different -- from being an American author.
    • 4/5
      I was lucky enough to get this book free with a copy of the Times newspaper some months ago. I wasn't sure what it would be about, but now that I've read it I'm very glad. 'The Opposite of Fate' is a collection of short essays and nonfiction pieces that Tan has written during her career, and cover a lot of the most important aspects of her life: her relationship with her mother; her family, and the tragedy of the deaths of her brother and father within a year to brain-tumours; visits to China; how her literature is viewed by students and critics; and also a nice medical mystery concerning Lyme disease, that seems like an episode of 'House' but written from the patient's perspective.
    • 3/5
      A collection of essays, talks at the universities, casual pieces written for various magazines, even a winning essay of 8 year-old then Amy on the importance of the local library. When they are good, they are very good, as good as Amy Tan can be. The problem is they repeat a lot. They obsessively dwell on the same topics which she tackles in her fiction: mother – daughter relationship, analysis of Amy Tan etc. On the other hand, when you learn more about her mother and their traumatic relationship, you do not really wonder why they surface again and again.
    • 5/5
      Precious insight to a great writer's take on life and writing.