This book about 11 missing American tourists in Myanar (Burma) sucks you in from the first sentence and simply does not let go until the very last word. Awesome, awesome read.

Not one of her best, just barely 3*'s. Too much extra description of clothes and people and not enough interaction to help understand the people better...do like the dead lady narrator

DNF on page 66 (of 472 pages total)

Amy Tan's 2005 novel, "Saving Fish from Drowning," has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and I finally picked it up tonight to give it a go.

But there is *nothing* appealing to me in this book. The main character, a middle-aged woman named Bibi, is already dead on page one, narrating the story as a ghost, and since Bibi is largely emotionless, dully unflappable and irreverent about her own murder, there are *zero* narrative stakes in the book. Bibi makes it clear that she is in need of nothing and wants nothing, as a ghost or when she was alive. Then she goes into pages upon pages of her own ancient backstory, before introducing a dozen other characters with pages upon pages of their individual backstories. At page 66, I'm still reading backstory, waiting for the plot to appear.

Regarding all of this exposition, everything is either super boring, super gross, or a combination of the two. The characters are all upper-middle class or upper-class art lovers and travelers, and while that ought to be fascinating, the character details all center on their mundane lives, sexual dysfunction, body shaming, and other details that you would associate with self-loathing literary fiction set in suburban America.

The promise of international travel and a foreign setting just isn't panning out for me here. Reading this book just feels like pointless suffering. I'm putting it down.

Two stars. Not for me.

Tan (The Opposite of Fate, ***1/2 Mar/Apr 2004) explores satire, absurdity, and magical realism with varying degrees of success. Although her forays into spiritual depth are familiar, her gossipy and somewhat off-putting narrator, who shares her catty opinions on the likes of national body odors and each of the many fumbling love affairs, is an irritating distraction. Setting the stage in tumultuous Myanmar (the old Burma renamed by the military government in power) is daring and promising, but the understanding that grows between the Karen tribe and the Americans never quite pays off. While Tan's novel could be The Canterbury Tales for the modern soul, this pilgrimage is slightly too inclined to exhaustive wandering.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

Usually when I pick up Amy Tan, I expect a similar formula and style. Saving Fish From Drowning was so unlike anything I’ve read by her. I see from ratings that it isn’t everyone’s favorite Tan novel but I highly recommend it. If you’re looking for Tan’s wit but with more twisted adventure, I say go for it!

I put off reading this book for a long time because of the horrible reviews. I can see some of the reviewers points, but overall, I really enjoyed this novel.

This is definitely a departure from Tan's normal novels about the relationships between Chinese-born mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. Although she does a wonderful job capturing the dynamics of those relationships, while weaving in fascinating glimpses of Chinese history, I'm glad to see her trying something new.

A few of the characters in this novel are Chinese, but the majority are not. One of the criticisms I have read is that she has too many prominent characters and therefore spreads her character development too thin. I agree somewhat, but beyond the narrator, the recently deceased, but always bigger than life Bibi Chen, the plot is more important.

Plot-wise, this is also a huge change for Tan. This is an adventure novel which ventures into the land of magical realism. This begins with the idea that Bibi's spirit is following her friends on the trip through China and Burma that she was supposed to lead.

Thrown into the mix is a glimpse of life in the military regime of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Overall, this was a great read, which I found to be relatively quick, despite it's healthy length.

First of all, I should say that I know these people and so does everyone else. These are the typical ignorant tourists blundering their way through a world they don't quite understand who end up learning something about the "evil empire" of Myanmar and trying to do good. The fact that they are Americans is irrelevant because they could be from anywhere, and the fact that they're mostly pretentious academics and financially well-off only makes it easier to poke fun at them. The comedy also has its off-stage voice, the original trip organizer who's now dead and can only make criticisms and commentaries from "the other side." (Well, there is ONE intervention to get over a sticking point in plot development...) Most of this wasn't very funny to me because as I said, I've read this stuff before and moreover, since I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for many years, I "know" these people, the USUAL hodgepodge of pretentious academics and activists who take themselves too seriously. (Maybe a less-familiar bunch would have been funnier but I doubt it...) Maybe Amy Tan needed a break from Chinese-American history told through the eyes of women, which she does very well, but her comic novel was more novel than comic for me. Not her forte.

I'm somewhat confused about whether I liked this book or not. I wasn't sure if I was reading a story based on true events since the story starts with the author's note about how this story came to be. The story is about 12 Americans taking a trip to Burma. Only problem is that their tour guide has died right before they are to go on their trip. They decide to go anyway. The story slowly builds up, giving the back story on all the characters involved. Accompanying the group is the ghost of the recently departed tour guide and it is entirely told from her point of view, since death has given her the gift of mind reading. It plays out almost like a comedy of errors, where things that can go wrong go wrong, where misinterpretation of culture and language leads to trouble. Along the way, a tribe decides that one of the members of the group is their long awaited messiah come to rescue them from oppression. The tribe decide they will kidnap him, and to make it easier, they will trick the whole group into coming with them.

The story was not all that bad, but it had too many holes for me to like it in the end. The last chapter summing up what happened is what made me give this 2 stars. It felt like another writer stepped in and finished this book for Amy Tan. Disappointing, as her other books have been fantastic. I don't know where this one was trying to go.

A bit outside Tan's usual scope. Not bad, but not great, either.

I really loved the start of this book, a really strong start. I felt the ending faltered just a bit. Maybe it went on a touch too long...it is a really good book and the descriptions of the places is fabulous, just painted a beautiful picture in my head!

Four stars for the beginning which was clever in a cheeky way and two for the second half which got worse and worse. I was so tired of the characters by the end I didn’t care what happened to them.

DNF @57% - the story started strong (the first 3/4 chapters) but it deflated quite fast. At 57% not that much has happened. VERY unlikeable characters, and is this book trying to scare so I never go to some regions in Asia? The depictions of the culture there…