Tan pulls readers into her intimate reality with essay collection

Sunday, December 14, 2003

By Kim Crow, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

To Amy Tan fans, her first collection of nonfiction writing will explore familiar territory. Readers spend more time with her famously blunt, histrionic mother, the suicide death of her grandmother, the untimely deaths of her brother and father. Tan shares the back story to her fictional stories, explaining where they came from and how they influenced her writings.

	"The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings" By Amy Tan Putnam ($24.95)

The genesis of the book is Tan's discovery that her "Joy Luck Club" is available in CliffsNotes form. In a laugh-out-loud hilarious chapter ("The CliffsNotes Version of My Life"), Tan gently pokes fun at herself, the media and the invisible authors of her CliffsNotes, mock-glad that they have all the answers to her life that she has been so assiduously working toward in her writings.

Along the way, Tan relates the tale of her parents' fateful marriage, her unusual childhood, her restless mother's search for happiness -- and cleanliness-- that led Tan to change schools a dozen times across California and then Europe. She shares stories of boyfriends and the haunting murder of a best friend, matter-of-factly switching between the mystical and practical aspects of her personality that are common threads in her novels.

"The Opposite of Fate" offers excellent insight into the nuts and bolts of being a writer. The chapter "Angst and the Second Novel" details Tan's struggles to follow the staggering success of the her first; "Hollywood and 'The Joy Luck Club' " follows Tan as she watches her beloved novel become a film; we also learn of her close relationship with her editor and the often hilarious escapades surrounding readings and personal appearances.

Tan writes as warmly and humorously as ever, most chapters coming across like an intimate conversation with an old friend. Many of these essays have been printed before -- as articles in Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker, as forwards in books and a commencement address -- which explains why much of the subject matter is somewhat repetitive.

Not all the essays warranted inclusion in this otherwise fine collection. Only the most ardent of fans will care for Tan's recollections of road trips with her rock band, The Rock-Bottom Remainders, which is more like reading yearbook inscriptions filled with giggly inside jokes and guess-you-had-to-be-there moments. And not to make light of Lyme disease, but Tan's minute-by-minute retellings of doctor visits and her eventual diagnosis is more akin to the droning of an ever-ailing grandparent than the confidences of the compelling writer we know Tan to be.

Still, Tan's thoughtful analysis of the people, places, choices and circumstances -- the opposites of fate -- in her life will make her fans appreciate her gifts even more.

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