Saving Fish from Drowning

Amy Tan bows to Geoffrey Chaucer by imitating Canterbury Tales both in structure and subject matter. Saving Fish from Drowning and Canterbury Tales probe the mystery of human life, the pain and joy, the humor and drama. Tan and Chaucer unravel complexity. Chaucer structures his work around a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury. He writes descriptive portraits of each pilgrim and lets them interact. Harry Balley, the tavern owner, challenges the pilgrims to a competition: who can tell the best story? The competitive tales are told with humor, drama, pain and vulgarity, a reflection of the human situation. Underneath the stories Chaucer examines major questions, the questions we still struggle with. What do men want? What do women want? How does gender affect life? How do humans deal with evil? What is the cause of evil in the world? How much control do humans have? Are we programmed by the gods, by biology, by the mysteries of our own inconsistencies? Canterbury Tales is relevant today, not because Chaucer answers these questions, but because he asks them. In 2007 Tan asks the same questions. She puts her characters in a contemporary setting, but borrows Chaucer's structure and subject-matter. Tan leaves no doubt that she parallels Chaucer's structure when she creates a group of travelers on a trip to Asia. Just like Chaucer she writes a portrait of each traveler and sets them up to interact. If that is not enough to tip the reader Tan names one of her leading characters Harry Bailey. She changes the spelling, but still gives a big hint. She is a good student of English literature. Like Chaucer Tan also explores ultimate human questions. She explains her title choice with a story and an epigram. The story describes Myanmar fishermen scooping up fish, bringing them to shore while saying they are saving fish from drowning. Sadly the fish die on shore, and all the fisherman can do is to sell them for profit. Tan copies an epigram from Albert Camus. "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." By giving the reader two thought provoking selections at the beginning of the novel she establishes a thesis. To Tan each human being has a limited perspective, and acts with multiple blind spots. Human limitation can make good intentions as destructive as pure evil. Beware of do-gooders. Tan's edgy opinionated narrator Bibi Chen, who unfortunately died after arranging the trip with a group of her friends from San Francisco, comments on her friends from a broad Olympian view. This narrative technique works well for Tan because while stating her thesis--humans have limited perspective and often create chaos because of that--Tan allows Bibi to see the whole chaotic mess and serve it up to the reader. Bibi, like the rest of us, is powerless to effect change. Saving Fish from Drowning and Canterbury Tales make Tan and

I enjoyed this book. Oddly, I have not been able to get into Amy Tan's other books but I enjoyed this one. It is a fun and interesting read. Give it a chance before you buy into the reviews.

Like many other reviewers on this site, I was put off a bit at first by the 'new' Amy Tan I was discovering, who didn't seem to live up to my expectations. She didn't feel like the same author at all, and I kept missing what I think of as her 'soft whisper voice.' The voice this time out is sardonic, a bit silly, even snide at times. Of course, it's not Ms. Tan 'talking,' it's Bibi Chen, the dead narrator. It takes a while for her character to establish itself, but once she does, I for one was hooked, and by the end I was just as moved, entertained, and satisfied as usual. 'Secret Senses' is still my favorite, but this one is by no means poorly done, as some have implied. The plot is simple enough. A group on tour in Asia disappears while in Myanmar, and the one remaining tour member, who manages not to disappear with them, is rather beside himself [in more ways than one] in trying to figure out what has happened to the others, and, if possible, save them. The ghost who narrates the entire book knows what happened, and therefore we do too, and it's apparent to her and to us that things are not quite as bad as they might be. But they're bad enough. The group is being held captive, sort of, by some tribesmen who live in abject fear of Myanmar's military, and rightly so. They tourists become pawns in a power struggle involving the U.N., the government of what used to be Burma, various diplomats, and, most of all, the news media, especially a world-wide TV news service known as Global News Network, or GNN. [Har har!] The story line works itself out much as you suspect it will, but along the way we learn a lot about what makes personal relationships work [or not], what makes things 'newsworthy' [or not], the fact that things don't always mean what they seem to, and the difference between individual people of all ethnicities and the group identifiers we have come to associate with them. Which brings us to the most important point of this book, and indeed of all Amy Tans books, and very possibly of ALL good books, by anybody: the importance of the individual. We know these truths to be self evident-- that the individual human being is ALWAYS more important than whatever group he or she belongs to, than his or her ethnicity, than his or her political affiliation, religion, or whatever. We know all this, but in this day and age of mass information and misinformation, it doesn't hurt to be reminded from time to time by someone as eloquent as Amy Tan.

As someone who fled the oppressive regime from Burma, I found Amy Tan's book "Saving Fish from Drowning" conveyed the experiences of the local people so vividly. The story has some parts which made me laughed while some parts reminded me the daily existence of most of my countrymen. I thoroughly enjoyed her book. Even though it is a work of fiction, local's daily experience of being oppressed by the military regime is definitely not fictional. Some characters such as twin boys are true; Johnny & Luther Htoo are now 17, and live in a refugee camp in Thailand. It is also not a fiction that Burmese military regime still uses child soldiers till this day. Amy Tan did a wonderful job as a story teller with a great sense of humor & flare for vivid descriptions & analogies! I especially loved the title, and it's poetic expression of actions resulting from belief.

Amy Tan's "Saving Fish from Drowning," centered around the story of twelve Americans who decided to visit China and Myammar for a vacation. Unfortunately, their tour leader, Bibi Chen was killed. However, they decided to replace her with another leader and went ahead with their plan. The book began with a news report of eleven Americans who went missing in Myammar and no one knew what happened to them. They were rumors that the group was held hostage by the Myammar military government. The story was told through the spirit of Bibi, who went along with her friends to China and Myammar. The group was an assortment of characters; a homosexual, a TV star dog trainer, an art dealer, a human right activist and among these adults, there were two teenagers. I thought "Saving Fish from Drowning," was extremely well-written. Amy Tan was able to transport her readers to the adventure of the twelve Americans travelling in China and Burma. She was able to engage her readers from page one till the end, always leaving them wanting for more, wanting to know what will happened next. In addition, her characters were well-developed. Even though this was a work of fiction, I felt at times, especially with the beginning of the book, it read like a travelogue with Amy Tan's meticulous descriptions of the sights and sounds of China and Myammar. The book was basically an adventure among a group of friends who were very different and who had no idea what was in stored for them. This was one of the best that I have read in a long time! Highly recommended!