Oh Good Lord! What an awful waste of time!This was a torture to finish, but I was really holding out for an ending that would make the misery worth while. But nay - that was not to be the case.Here was an opportunity for a dozen world travelers to have an adventure. And they may have had one, but it HAD to be more interesting than the telling we got from Amy. Even the sexual escapades were boring. How can that be? How were these people so boring AND so gullible? The characters were not believeab...

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news...Author Tan back in the swim'Fish' departs from Chinese-American tales, features Chaucer spinJenny Shank, Special to the NewsPublished October 28, 2005 at midnightAmy Tan's last book, 2003's nonfiction collection The Opposite of Fate, closed with an essay about her struggle with Lyme disease. Tan described increasingly alarming symptoms, including joint pain, difficulty with organization, and visual hallucinations, and she left her fans with a cliff hanger:...

I have waited awhile to post about this book because I like Amy Tan so much that I was hoping that the story would continue to resonate and lead me to learn that I liked the book more than I thought I had...no such luck.There are many smart devices in the book and I continue to like and enjoy Amy Tan's voice - but I never got to the point where I cared so much about many of the characters in this book - although some were memorable.I did discover while I was waiting that my visual image of Bibi

From the book jacket Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less-than-honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses. And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a...

From reading the back cover of this book, I expected something like The Poisonwood Bible. Some of the elements are similar: group of Americans visit third world country, spend time with the natives, have their preconceptions shattered through hardship and numerous misunderstandings. But this book was unsettlingly lighthearted. I think that Amy Tan was trying to write a book that treats the reader as a tourist, as someone who seeks a story that is exotic and adventurous without being too disturbi...

For readers who can accept a ghost narrator, this is a great mix of travelogue, drama and social commentary. Arguably, there's a murder mystery as well, but that is the weakest link.It's clear that readers have been polarised, most likely by the ghost narrator or what they expected based on other Amy Tan books. For me, this was the first one of hers that I read, and ghosts are quite all right.On the other hand, it's probably true that there's a lot packed into this story -- there's stuff about r...

If Tolstoy and Cecil B. DeMille collaborated on a novel, it would turn out something like this: A cast of thousands of miserable characters.Saving Fish From Drowning was not a novel, but an endurance test. If I didn't have to facilitate a book group about this novel, I would not have read past the first 50 pages. I've heard great things about Amy Tan, and haven't read her other stuff -- and won't discount it based on this -- but lordy, I have no incentive to read her work now.This novel is a cla...

Well, it only took two months, but I finished "Saving Fish From Drowning," the final Amy Tan novel. And one of my favorites.So why did it take me so long to finish reading this a second time? To the point where I lost ALL WILL to read at all for two months?Because this is a thick, slogging book of intensity."Fish" is not an easy read. Oh, sure on a micro level it is. There's not too many hard ideas and certainly no difficult words or sentences to trod through, but on a macro scale it's brain suc...

I think I have read all of Amy Tan's books, but this one was completely different. To really understand it you have to believe that dead people can be channeled, and second you have to know a lot more about the history of Burma/ Myanmar than I do. I could never figure out if this was based on a real case, or whether it was based on a psychic's remembrances, or was just Amy sort of putting her readers on. However quirky and odd it is, and however she came up with the idea for the novel, I enjoyed...

There is an anonymous quote in the preface that reads, "A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. "Don't be scared," I tell those fishes. "I am saving you from drowning." Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it...

Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning is the first Tan book I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and it's safe to say it will most certainly not be the last. At times dreamy, at times direct and to the point, Tan's surreal and harrowing tale of adventure oftentimes seems almost to enter the realm of magical realism. I must say that this book was one of the most effortless reads I have ever dived into - not once did I ever find myself having to glance back a page or pause to figure out what was h...

I'm a huge fan of Amy Tan, and this book was a disappointment. Saving Fish from Drowning was outside of her voice and style, and unlike her previous novels, it took me forever to get into it. I finally finished after forcing myself to do so. Perhaps it's that I've come to expect her typical style that mixes magic, relationships, lessons learned and insight to Asian cultural. You could argue that Saving Fish from Drowning included those elements. However, I feel those pieces were not entwined int...

Unlike others who have read all of Tan's books, I have only had the pleasure of reading The Joy Luck Club. Just going off that book I found Saving Fish from Drowning to be quite different.While it held true to Tan's brilliant, rich way of writing and continued her analysis of human nature and relationships, she seemed to step outside of her usual comfort zone and the whole tone of the book took on that of a political adventure. One thing that was particularly unique and enjoyable was our narrato...

This was a book club selection that I was NOT going to read. I read The Joy Luck Club a few years back & didn't care for it at all, so reading another Amy Tan book was not on the top of my list. But the back of Saving Fish had a review by Isabelle Allende, whom I adore. I decided to read 30 pages because I couldn't imagine Isabelle steering me wrong. If I hated it (which I figured would be the case) I would quit the book. Well, I enjoyed Saving Fish immensely. My favorite books transport me to p...

It took me awhile to read this novel. Each paragraph holds thoughtful meanings and insight that aren't quickly digested but gradually enjoyed. Human nature, what we are about, what I do and why I do what I do, are some things stirred up. I love all of Amy Tan's writing. Her history of China is right there with Buck's The Good Earth. I would ask one thing of her. To keep writing novels.

Tourists are dumb.

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 ch...

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 i...

I read this book a long time ago and should have written this review a long time ago. What a wonder this book is! Having read all of Amy Tan’s books, I expected good writing, serious cultural and gender themes, and disturbing realities. What I did not expect was this book. It is side splittingly, laugh out-loud, hilarious!You get the usual significant wit, wisdom and writing chomps of Amy Tan, along with Swiftian satire, that is stand up comedian funny. Think Robin Williams relaxed.Every bit of

this is the first book i read the intro, and i am glad i did. the author was wandering in nyc when rain forced her to seek refuge in the American Psychical Institute. there she found a volume on "automatic writing," in which there was a factual decription of a woman who was experiencing auto writing from a woman Bibi Chen. Bibi Chen was not an imagined person - she was an actual person that Amy Tan knew. The writings are further authenticated because the subject matter was the recent disappearan...