"In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels. "
For a book like this, it's easier to quote the Goodreads review than try to summarize. This book contains essays, along with email transcripts, that allow Tan to explore her family, her own history, her writing, and more. For the first time, she writes publicly about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen.
I have read all of Tan's books and found this book to be just as interesting as her other memoir, The Opposite of Fate. I didn't find all of the essays here to be compelling, but I expected that. It was interesting to read about Tan's relationship with her parents and also read about her brothers, but it was also fascinating to read about her approach to writing and her own work. I don't think this is a must-read, especially if you aren't already familiar with at least some of her work, but I was glad I checked it out from the library.
No comments:
Post a Comment