And then we went to Germany and couldn't find a place to live there, and started driving south. I was 16. I was a horrible child. I was angry. I was numb.
Teenagers are already cynical at that age.
But I also had this layer of grief that came out in anger. The family finally settled in Montreux, Switzerland, where Tan graduated from high school in her junior year in 1969. They have no children, but Tan admits to spoiling a pair of Yorkshire terriers. She even took one to President Clinton's 1997 inaugural ball in her handbag. Tan, who has a master's degree in linguistics from San Jose State University, worked as a freelance business writer in corporate communications for a while before she quit and followed her mother's advice to write fiction.