Saving Fish From Drowning (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
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: When she wrote that essay, it wasn't clear if she'd ever be able to write another novel.With the publication of her new novel, Saving Fish from Drowning (her first since 2001's The Bonesetter's Daughter), Tan's admirers can breathe easy.In a phone interview from her San Francisco home, Tan said that during the worst days of her illness, "It's like pieces of my brain were sand, just rolling out, and I felt I was trying to gather the sand before it completely leaked out."She worried that she'd never be able to complete another book, but added, "What's kind of strange, however, is that you feel apathetic. I would be anxious about my not being able to think that well and work, but on the other hand, I didn't have the energy to fight it that much."You might think that once Tan was finally diagnosed and began to improve, she would go easy on herself and tell a simple story, but shirking a challenge has never been her approach. Saving Fish from Drowning is a sprawling, 500-page tale with more than a dozen main characters and just as many plot lines. The book marks a departure for the author, as it's the first of her novels that doesn't largely focus on Chinese and Chinese-American characters and mother-daughter themes.Instead, it tells the story of a group of 12 Americans of different ages, genders and ethnicities on a trip in China and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), who end up trapped in the jungle village of a persecuted minority tribe.A touch of the familiar Tan comes through in the voice of the deceased narrator, the dynamic Bibi Chen, a San Francisco art maven whose mysterious murder begins the tale. Chen is fictional, and all of the events in the novel are likewise products of Tan's imagination, but Tan's playful approach with the book's opening might leave some readers unsure.In "A Note To The Reader," Tan describes an unusual event that sparked the book's creation. Caught in the rain in Manhattan, she writes, she ducked into a building called the "American Society for Psychical Research," where she found the "automatic writings" that a California woman claimed had been dictated to her by the spirit of Bibi Chen.This tale sounds far-fetched enough for fiction, but anyone who has read The Opposite of Fate, replete with tales of bizarre spiritual occurrences in Tan's life, is primed to believe the author's reports of strange coincidences and ghosts."I wanted to start this book off with everything in there being a question of what's true and what's not true," Tan said. "So, for example, in the epigraph, you have something that was said by Camus that was truly something he said, and then you have a quote attributed to anonymous which was actually written by me."Similarly, although there is a real American Society for Psychical Research, it contains no automatic writing that Tan used directly for the novel. When Tan visited the Society, she said, "there were files on automatic writing and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if a whole book were just sitting right there for me and I could just take it home and copy it?' So that part was made up, and the whole thing about Bibi Chen - that wasn't anybody that ever existed . . .""But the strange thing is," Tan continued, "I had a friend read this book early on, and he said, 'It's great that you actually knew this woman and that this all took place in your home town.' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And he said, 'Well, you knew Bibi.' And I said, 'Bibi? You think she's real?' And he said, 'Well yes, of course.' And I said, 'Do you remember a story about a woman who was murdered in San Francisco who was really well known?' " said Tan, referring to her fictional backstory for Bibi Chen. "And he goes, 'Yeah, I think I do.' "While Tan fashioned the book after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, centered on 12 people who go on a journey, she also wanted to include her deceased mother in the story."I had just lost her just a few months before I finished The Bonesetter's Daughter, and suddenly I realized at the end of it that it wasn't that I had to write another mother-daughter story, but that my mother - her voice - could be the narrator. She could be the dead narrator, the dead travel guide, and she could have all that humor and wry observation and feistiness that my mother had and she could come along on the trip."Although Tan wrote with the Canterbury Tales in mind, one of the few detectable traces of this influence is in the name of one character, Harry Bailley, who was the innkeeper in Chaucer's tales and surfaces as "a British-born celebrity dog trainer" in Tan's novel. "I don't think most people would catch that," Tan said. "These are little things that are more like postcards to myself. "Another Chaucer-like touch is the humorous tone of Tan's novel: Although it begins with a murder and includes a host of misfortunes, the book is a fun read, and the overall effect is comic. Tan said the choice to leaven some of the serious underlying issues of the book - which touches on questions of human rights in Myanmar - was a conscious one."It's a comic novel because I wanted to address something that was very serious, something that disturbed me that was about morality and ignorance and intentions and about a situation in the world that is very, very sad," Tan said. "And the only way that I felt that I could approach it was with humor. Humor to me is a way of opening yourself up. . . you're not approaching a subject with extreme reverence that makes the complete picture impossible to see. With humor you just sort of shake loose everything that is in you and when you're opened up you can confront what is darker and harder to look at."Much of this humor is conveyed through Bibi Chen's wry narration. Chen, who was supposed to be the group's tour guide before her murder, instead serves as a ghostly guide, keeping readers entertained with observations such as: "Throughout history, many a world leader was injudiciously influenced by his malfunctioning bladder, bowels, and other private parts. Didn't Napoleon lose at Waterloo because he couldn't sit in a saddle, on account of hemorrhoids?"Saving Fish from Drowning is in large part a rollicking travel narrative, and Tan does a masterful job of capturing the unease Americans feel when traveling in countries where they don't understand the language, especially at border crossings and passport checks where scowling, armed officials often engage in "ten minutes of inspecting and stamping and huffing with authority."Tan teases the reader with such scenes, by having Bibi state right away that the trip is going to go awry. But true to the book's comic tone, some of Bibi's most ominous foreshadowing presages a group bout of traveler's diarrhea. Tan said she included this event partly for "verisimilitude.""I was recently going into the interior of China, and you're on a bus being jostled about for eight hours a day, bumping up and down and knocking your head into the window, and there were people having diarrhea. There's never been a trip I've been on that somebody did not have a problem like that. For me that just had to be in there because it would have been unrealistic to have nobody get sick."Suspense builds throughout the book as the reader wonders what is going to become of these bumbling, very American travelers. Tan "wanted to bring the story to a point that I knew was going to be very uncomfortable," she said. "As they go further on this journey, they're going to encounter deeper and deeper moral issues for themselves," and become increasingly unsettled by the country's repressive regime.With all of the confusion, cultural missteps, and ominous signs throughout the novel, the ending may surprise some readers. "What I hoped to get across is that we simply left the story off at a certain part of their (the characters') lives that is to me on some scale of happiness, probably right there about in the middle, and you don't know for certain which way their lives are going to go."As for Tan's life, a year and a half ago she embarked on a project with the composer Stuart Wallace to reinterpret The Bonesetter's Daughter as an American opera. She estimates the opera will premier in 2008."What I've learned from all of it is that you cannot translate an original work to another form, to another medium. You have to really take it all apart and pare it down to literally its bones and then recast it and recreate it with the bones in a different configuration and give it its own life."Tan is clearly back on her feet and making up for lost time. "I went through quite a period of struggle there," she admits, "and it really just took finally getting treatment so that my brain could come back. It was literally as though the fog had cleared when finally I started getting better."
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 is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."This book has been jostling around with me for the past year. I just couldn't settle down long enough to make my way into it. I am happy to have taken the swim, however, because Amy Tan never disappoints me. Never. She is an excellent story teller, and in this novel she has a way of suspending one's belief while expounding "ordinary" details about the story. I found myself thinking a few times, "Could that really happen?" Then I found myself just accepting things that I normally wouldn't - all in the name of being transported through fiction...one of my favorite things. It deals much with morality, though some of you might not enjoy some of the characters' take on the subject. However, if you are interested in a tale involving a deceased narrator, appreciation for art, interpersonal relationships within a confined social group, an extended stay in the jungle of Burma where one is kidnapped without realizing it, and an extended commentary on the human rights abuses of the military junta in Burma (the junta have renamed it Myanmar, but with respect to the tale described in this book, let's all call it Burma, okay?)...consider it.
What do You think about Saving Fish From Drowning (2006)?
I picked this up in my library as part of a random assault on the shelves to find people I hadn’t read before. (So far, a rule of thumb seems to be ‘shelves fine, ignore stand on the way in, ignore all free standing round things, round things at end of shelves good, shelf on way out also good. On no account get anything where there are more than 6 things by the same author in one place. This may be another prejudice but I’m still in library rehab, so let me be).I was quite pleased that coming home all 4 of the authors had 4 or 5 stars on Amazon and at least a couple available on Kindle and at the library, should I like them. However, given I only really want to read on my Kindle now and old fashioned books feel a bit last year (and I can’t knit while I read them!) this book took a little longer than it ought to have done. Amy Tan was further improved in the worth reading standing stakes though, when I found a couple of her books on Helen’s shelves.The length of time it took me to read Saving Fish From Drowning in no way reflects on how much I enjoyed it. It is another book though where I struggle to think exactly why. The story, narrated by a recently deceased friend and leader of the group, tells the story of a rather naive group of people who take a ‘cultural’ trip to China and Burma and their experiences as the trip teeters precariously around the edges of going very wrong. Perhaps that is a good sentence to sum up the book in fact; it teeters around the edges of exploring the characters, including the life of the narrator, dips its toe into the politics of the regimes in Burma and China, paddles along the edges of rebel causes and the unreality that perhaps builds up in the minds of the desperate and sprinkles flavoursome herbs of understanding about those countries too.That’s not a bad thing. I’m not desperate to be preached at about the miseries of life elsewhere when I’m ready for bed and this book created an inclination to know more, while a more heavy handed approach might have made me shut the book and shut my mind because I don’t want to know about more awful things. There were some eloquent blendings of beliefs, some clever characters and all the people in the group and the wider world of the book felt real and knowable. I’ll definitely read more Amy Tan; I don’t know if I’d read this one again but I’d certainly add it to my list of ‘things I’m better for having read’.
—Merry
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 it! On some levels it is a travelogue, and in some ways it is a column in Conde Nast Traveller telling about how a trip can go wrong. In some ways it is a mystery, and in some ways it reminds you of Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible". It just doesn't fit smoothly into any one category, not even the category of Amy Tan novels. I would love to get other readers' "take" on it. This is a novel for someone who wants to read something very different than what he or she usually reads.
—Fran
i listened to this on audio, read by the author. i love amy tan, but they really should have found a professional reader. ms. tan has several different characters with british or australian accents and her accents are all over the place and very distracting. that being said, the book was enjoyable. i felt like the ending dragged on a bit long (you know how most of the time, when you’re done reading a book , you sit back and wonder, “and then what? what happens next? well, you don’t have to wonder in this book. she spends the last disc and a half explaining what happens to each character for pretty much the remainder of their lives. it was much less satisfying than i’d ever thought it might be.) but during the book itself, i thought she did a marvelous job of portraying very real characters traveling in a very foreign country. these were not your stereotypical tourists–they were prepared for eventualities, they felt that they were open-minded and conscientious, but every time that a character would do something or react in a way that i recognized as what i would have done myself in that situation, the author points out how misguided or mistaken the character was. she also did an excellent job of portraying how easily serious miscommunication can happen when the language barrier exists (especially when there are basic differences in the ways societies operate). not only was it an entertaining read, i also felt like i might have gained insights into an unfamiliar culture and become more aware of pitfalls that can happen when you assume that everyone comes from a similar background to you. even parts of your “background” that you take for granted or maybe don’t even realize that exist.
—Carissa
