OPPOSITE OF FATE(事与愿违)

Tan's bestselling works of fiction are, in part, based on her own family history, and this robust book, her first nonfiction effort, explains much about where those stories came from and how they influenced her. The collection of "casual pieces" (previously published in such diverse venues as Harper's Bazaar, Ski Magazine, the New Yorker, Salon.com and even PW) covers Tan's childhood in California and Switzerland; her writing career; her relationships with her mother and her late editor, Faith Sale; and, most significantly, the role of fate in her life. Raised with "two pillars of beliefs" (Christian faith on her father's side; Chinese fate on her mother's), Tan finds luckboth good and badin all corners of her life. Ultimately, however, she knows "a higher power knows the next move and... we are at the mercy of that force." As she reflects on how things have happened in her 50-odd years, Tan's writing varies from poetic to prosaic. In an excerpt from a journal she kept during a 1990 trip to China, she eloquently describes Shanghai's streets: "Gray pants and white shirts are suspended from long bamboo poles that overhang the street. The laundry flaps in the wind like proletarian banners." But reading about Tan's adventures with her rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, feels a bit like reading someone else's high school yearbook's inside jokes, as she reminisces about truck-stop breakfasts and late-night sing-alongs. Still, this is a powerful collection that should enthrall readers of The Joy Luck Club and Tan's other novels. B&w photos.

Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which is now a PBS production called Sagwa, for which Tan is a creative consultant and writer. Tan was also a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club, and her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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In her first book of nonfiction, bestselling novelist Amy Tan shares her personal philosophy of fate.

Amy Tan was born into a family that believed in fate. In The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, she explores this legacy, as well as American circumstances, and finds ways to honor the past while creating her own brand of destiny. She discovers answers in everyday actions and attitudes-from writing stories, decorating her house with charms, learning to ski, and living with squirrels, to dealing with three members of her family afflicted with brain disease, surviving natural disasters, and shaking off both family curses and the expectations that she should become a doctor and a concert pianist.

With the same spirit, humor, and magic that characterize her beloved novels, Amy Tan presents a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we face today, contemplating how things happen-in her own life and beyond-but always returning to the question of fate and its opposites: the choices, charms, influences, attitudes, and lucky accidents that shape us all.

A Note to the Reader
FATE AND FAITH
The CliffsNotes Version of My Life
　How We Knew
　A Question of Fate
　Faith
CHANGING THE PAST
　Last Week
　My Grandmother's Choice
　Thinly Disguised Memoir
　Persona Errata
　Scent
AMERICAN　CIRCUMSTANCES　AND　CHINESE　CHARACTER
　Fish Cheeks
　Dangerous Advice
　Midlife Confidential
　Arrival Banquet
　Joy Luck and Hollywood
STRONG WINDS,STRONG　INFLUENCES
　What She Meant
　Confessions
　Pretty Beyond Belief
　The Most Hateful Words　
　My Love Affair with Vladimir Nabokov
LUCK, CHANCE,AND A CHARMED　LIFE
　Inferior Decorating　
　Room with a View, New Kitchen, and Ghosts
　Retreat to Reality
　My Hair, My Face, My Nails
　The Ghosts of My Imagination
A CHOICE OF WORDS
HOPE