Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

 

What you need to know about this one:

• Published in 2006
• One of Tan’s lesser known novels
• Less detail about Chinese history and culture than in author’s more popular books
• Focuses on 11 American tourists who disappear into the Myanmar jungle on Christmas morning
• A satirical look at American tourists (these are all from San Francisco) who naively place themselves in grave danger while expecting their good intentions and American citizenship to keep them safe from harm
• Comic at times, deadly serious at others, even when one sixteen-year-old boy reluctantly becomes a god for the tribe that kidnaps the group
• Not what most expected from Amy Tam after The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife or The Bonesetter’s Daughter

I imagine that this was quite a change-of-pace novel for Tan when she published it. I like it (not love it) because of the interesting characters she develops so well over the course of this 472-page story. If you like literary fiction, you are probably going to enjoy Saving Fish from Drowning.