“The Opposite of Fate”
by Amy Tan
Published: October 2003
ISBN: 0399150749

(Updated: October 29, 2004.)

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club remains one of my all time favourite books. In that book — as in her other works — Tan’s writing of the meetings of cultures, the meetings of generations feel honest and are heart and mind-opening. Certainly thought-provoking. One of my biggest reactions to her works, her characters, their stories is “would that we had the courage in real life to speak these meetings out loud”. It seems to me that we would all so be better off for it.

In this non-fiction work of hers — a collection of “musings” — Ms. Tan self-describes as being fascinated by fate, the meeting and clashing of it with faith, the result of this in how we live our lives. She wonders if this fascination is the source of her writing. Oddly enough it is so not the result reading her provokes in me that I look forward to further discovering the things that push her forward or cause her to pause (while seeing how this differs from what pushes me to read her and to pause while reading her :o)

My “couldn’t wait to get back to it” factor for this book is 3 out of 5 hearts. My “stay in my heart” factor is 5 out of 5 hearts.