Saving Fish from Drowning [Audiobook] [CD]

I found this book highly engaging and readable, the characters clearly defined. There was a great deal of humor, much of it black, and a great deal of heart. This book was a page turner with a message. Each character is a recognizable tourist type, and most of them would be horrified if they were saddled with the "Ugly American" label. But then, they really aren't "ugly" at all, but well meaning if clueless. On the other hand, the natives are not all innocents, and there is a lot of humor in the misdirections and misunderstandings that ensue. As I say in my title, I am glad I didn't read all these negative reviews first because I probably wouldn't have picked the book up at all and would have missed a nice reading experience.

I adore Amy Tan's writing. I teach JLC to 10th graders every year, encourage them to go on and read The Kitchen God's Wife or The BoneSetter's Daughter. So when, on a trip to Singapore, I saw her latest novel, I pounced on it, dropped what I was currently reading and started in. Now, I'm the first to say Tan needed to move on; while her tales of family cultural conflict fascinate me, she's talented enough that I wanted to see her branch out. She has here, but not to good effect.

For a writer capable of such nuance and subtlety, I find SFFD oddly flat and predictable, naive even in its attempt to portray the cultural clash between her spoiled California tourists and their hapless kidnappers. Her characterizations are broad and obvious: the tourists think anything less than the Four Seasons is roughing it, travel with syringes and IV drips in case of disease, and effuse about wanting to experience the "real" people while sneering at the tourist route they are so blatantly part of. As a seasoned ex-pat myself, thse people are stereotypes among the travelling set, their broadly drawn characters failing to extend much beyond caricature. Yes, tourist can be patronizing and culturally insensitive and self-involved, all in the name of seeking an off-the-beaten-track experience, but Tan doesn't really tell us anything new, or even especially insightful here. Which is too bad, because her premise was wonderful.

Still, I give it a 3 because it is, after all, Amy Tan, and if we've grown to expect more from her, I'm not sure she should be penalized for writing that's only good, rather than her usual excellent. It is, in the end, a fun read. Just not as riveting as we're used to..

Fans of Amy Tan are in for a surprise with her latest novel, SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING. In this satirical tale of cross-cultural faux pas, international media, and uninformed American goodwill turned mostly bad, Ms. Tan writes an Asia-centered version of Tom Wolfe's BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (or perhaps Richard Dooling's WHITE MAN'S GRAVE). Only here, she substitutes Burma (Myanmar) for the Bronx and GNN (read CNN) for the media precipitator of much of the climactic action. The end result, much like Wolfe's 1987 novel, is amusing for its social commentary but light in its literary heft, substituting caricature and fantastic naivete for character and improbable events for plot. Nevertheless, the result is quite entertaining, although hardly likely to spawn any anti-CNN, save the rain forests, or boycott Burma movements.

Ms. Tan chooses as her storytelling vehicle the ghost of a wealthy art patron, Bibi Chen, who has just met an untimely and rather ghastly violent death. Bibi had already organized an art and culture tour for a number of her longtime friends that had planned to follow the fabled Burma Road from Lijiang in southwestern China (claimed by some to be the inspiration for Shangri-La) across the closed border into Myanmar. Despite Bibi's death, her friends decide to follow her itinerary with a new (and unbeknown to them, gay, seizure-prone, and completely inexperienced) guide, Bennie Trueba y Cela. A series of misadventures and misunderstandings plague their trip, most of which the omniscient Bibi-ghost is powerless to prevent, but the group eventually crosses the border with Bibi's mysterious help. Once in Myanmar, more misunderstandings ensue and the twelve travelers finds themselves unknowingly involved in a sort of pseudo-Christian, second coming of Christ cult with members of a Burmese minority group called the Karen. All but one of the group disappear into the deep jungle on what they believe is a Christmas surprise part of their tour, but the rest of the world believes they have either been lost, killed, or kidnapped by anti-government insurgents.

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING could well have been subtitled "Murphy's Law Comes to Myanmar," or perhaps "The Laws of Unintended Consequences." Innocent behavior turns to cultural insult, and everyone's best intentions create the worst of results. Ms. Tan draws of picture of hopeless cross-cultural confusion, where outdoor latrines turns out to be a sacred shrines, a copy of Stephen King's MISERY becomes the Holy Bible, and smuggled jewels and generous gifts of American dollars threaten or result in violent death at the hands of dictatorial governments. This indeed is the underlying premise of the Chinese fable about saving fish from drowning, that such acts of charity mask other objectives and often do little but harm to their intended recipients.

While Amy Tan's story line is serviceable in its role as socio-cultural satire, her characters are annoyingly stereotyped. The cast is filled with bumbling and culturally obtuse "ugly Americans," from the oversexed television star Harry Bailley to his sex-starved and swooning Chinese-American bombshell of a love object Marlena Chu, from the ultra-hypochondriac Heidi to the remarkably underdrawn Vera, a black woman who objects to the phrase "lazy eye" because "lazy" is a pejorative word. Most editorially unforgivable is the last chapter, a 42-page appendage that adds little and detracts much from the author's focus on events and misunderstandings in Myanmar, in the media, in intergovernmental relations, and among the group members themselves. Even the true nature of Bibi's death, once revealed, lends much weight to the outcome - just one more example of a fish saved from drowning only to die as an unintended result.

With SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING, Amy Tan has abandoned her usual cultural assimilation haunts for satirical realpolitik, tossing a Jon Stewart eye at American values and behavior and the dangers of unthinking, ratings-chasing media sensationalism. While this book is not on a literary par with Ms. Tan's THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER, it is nevertheless an engaging and often humorous read.