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Saving Fish From Drowning |  |
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Saving Fish From Drowning | |
The title of the book is derived from the practice of Myanmar fishermen who "scoop up the fish and bring them to shore. They say they are saving the fish from drowning. Unfortunately... the fish do not recover," This kind of magical thinking or hypocrisy or mystical attitude or sheer stupidity is a fair metaphor for the entire book. It may be read as a satire, a political statement, a picaresque tale with several "picaros" or simply a story about a tour gone wrong.
Bibi Chen, San Francisco socialite and art vendor to the stars, plans to lead a trip for 12 friends: "My friends, those lovers of art, most of them rich, intelligent, and spoiled, would spend a week in China and arrive in Burma on Christmas Day." Unfortunately, Bibi dies, in very strange circumstances, before the tour begins. After wrangling about it, the group decides to go after all. The leader they choose is indecisive and epileptic, a dangerous combo. Bibi goes along as the disembodied voice-over.
Once in Myanmar, finally, they are noticed by a group of Karen tribesmen who decide that Rupert, the 15-year-old son of a bamboo grower is, in fact, Younger White Brother, or The Lord of the Nats. He can do card tricks and is carrying a Stephen King paperback. These are adjudged to be signs of his deity and ability to save them from marauding soldiers. The group is "kidnapped," although they think they are setting out for a Christmas Day surprise, and taken deep into the jungle where they languish, develop malaria, learn to eat slimy things and wait to be rescued. Nats are "believed to be the spirits of nature--the lake, the trees, the mountains, the snakes and birds. They were numberless ... They were everywhere, as were bad luck and the need to find reasons for it." Philosophy or cynicism? This elusive point of view is found throughout the novel--a bald statement is made and then Tan pulls her punches as if she is unwilling to make a statement that might set a more serious tone.
There are some goofy parts about Harry, the member of the group who is left behind, and his encounter with two newswomen from Global News Network, some slapstick sex scenes and a great deal of dog-loving dialogue. These all contribute to a novel that is silly but not really funny, could have an occasionally serious theme which suddenly disappears, and is about a group of stereotypical characters that it's hard to care about. It was time for Amy Tan to write another book; too bad this was it. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
When Amy Tan walks into a bookstore and reads from her work, the audience is enthralled by her very presence. But an audio recording is an art form and a performance, not an author appearance. Some authors excel as performers—for example, Simon Brett performs his Murder in the Museum with aplomb —but Tan is not gifted with an actor's range. Alone in a studio, Tan does not do justice to her own work. Words melt when Tan drops her voice at the end of sentences—and even in the middle. It sounds as if she is rocking back and forth in front of the microphone, or perhaps looking down and away from the mike to study the text. She is also unable to produce different voices for her characters. The narrator who finds Bibi Chen's writings (via a psychic) sounds exactly like Bibi herself. The comments of Bibi's ghost on the ill-fated trip of several of her friends in China and Myanmar are clearly meant to be humorous, but this, too, doesn't come across in Bibi's voice. As a writer, Tan has a well-deserved following. Hopefully, she will leave future recordings to someone who can give her novels the breadth they deserve.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Fish is based on the real-life disappearance of 12 American tourists in Myanmar. The narrator is Bibi Chen, dealer in Chinese antiquities, who had arranged an art-oriented tour for her friends. When she dies under mysterious circumstances, the others decide to proceed, saying that Bibi will join them in spirit–an invitation she accepts. Mostly well-meaning, but ignorant and naive, the group lands in one hilarious situation after another due to cultural misunderstandings. On a lake outing, they are kidnapped and taken to a hidden village where a rebel tribe waits for the Younger White Brother, who will make them invisible and bullet-proof and enable them to recover their land. They believe that theyve found him in 15-year-old Rupert, an amateur magician. The tour group consists of 10 adults and 2 adolescents, some pillars of the community and some decidedly not, but all rich, intelligent, and spoiled. Bibi, feisty and opinionated, uncovers their fears, desires, and motives, and the shades of truth in their words. As the novel progresses, they become more human and less stereotypical, changing as a result of their experiences. Although Tan also satirizes the tourist industry, American Buddhism, and reality TV, her focus is on the American belief that everyone everywhere plays by the same rules. An extremely funny novel with serious undercurrents.–Sandy Freund, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
专业书评 From The Washington Post
By chance, before reading Saving Fish from Drowning, I picked up The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff, and found a story by Amy Tan called "Rules of the Game," which is a perfect exercise of perspective, character and language. This story was often on my mind when I tried to get through her new novel, since I was mystified as to what had happened to the author of such a lovely, precise and entertaining story.
I suppose that Saving Fish from Drowning is supposed to be fun or perhaps satiric. It's about a group of Americans who go on an art tour to Burma, and though the woman who organized the tour has died under mysterious circumstances, this doesn't stop her from (1) going along and (2) telling this story. (Sort of The Canterbury Tales with a ghost as the Host.) This narrator, named Bibi Chen, is a woman of social pretensions, not to mention an expert in Asian art, and she imagines herself to be a dry wit, but mostly when she says catty things about her friends, she sounds dated, ugly and bigoted. The tourists are ultimately kidnapped by some Burmese cultists, who have mistaken a member of the group as their savior.
Tan may have intended Bibi Chen to have an Evelyn Waugh quality, but where Waugh is surprising in his arch observations and in his delight with the impossibly cruel, Bibi is off-putting, particularly in her fascination with the scatological and her infantile attitudes about sex. For instance, Bibi holds forth on how various races and nationalities smell. She dislikes the way a Chinese peasant smells, but, she says, "I am not obsessive about cleanliness, not like the Japanese. . . . Why, even their toilets are equipped to spray your bottom with warm water and then dry it with wafts of air. . . . And while I'm on the topic, I can't say that cleanliness is renowned among the British I have known. . . . Theirs is a spit-and-polish kind of clean, a shiny shoe, a scrubbed face, while parts unseen are left untended. . . . The French are so-so, in my estimation, though I don't have a tremendous amount of experience here . . . but you do have to wonder why they invented so many perfumes."
Saving Fish from Drowning doesn't improve when you consider the minor characters either; they seem to be cliches in search of some signifying detail. For instance, we have Harry Bailley, one of the tour members, who is a middle-aged dog trainer "desperate for love and sex." "The damn trouble was, he had an enlarged prostate, the typical benign prostatic hyperplasia that afflicts many men, more annoying than harmful. But, by God, Harry would moan, it shouldn't strangle a man's best friend before he's even turned fifty!" The image of man's best friend is one that Tan just can't let alone. When Harry is propositioned by a prostitute, she writes, "Though Harry was tempted, he was also a veterinarian who was well aware of the precise opportunistic methods by which parasites and deadly viruses travel. Down, boy. Good boy."
This infantile attitude isn't occasional. For instance, there is "the other attractive single woman in the group, Heidi." She is described as having "big wondering eyes, limber legs, tumbling bunches of blond hair." Harry, however, is convinced that her breasts "could not possibly be real. (In fact, they were.) Harry, an expert in animal structure, had convinced himself he knew better. They pointed and didn't sway; he had noticed that many times. What's more, the nipples sat too high, as if they were doilies floating on balloons."
The sad thing is that, hidden away in these hundreds of pages, is a potentially fascinating story. The cultural misunderstandings between the kidnappers and the hostages and the way in which the media operate in sensational cases are amusing and could have been insightful. But the central element of this book's plot, the kidnapping, doesn't take place until after 230 pages of Bibi's inane observations, and by the time you get there, you're ready to go home.
Reviewed by Craig Nova
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Tan (The Opposite of Fate, ***1/2 Mar/Apr 2004) explores satire, absurdity, and magical realism with varying degrees of success. Although her forays into spiritual depth are familiar, her gossipy and somewhat off-putting narrator, who shares her catty opinions on the likes of national body odors and each of the many fumbling love affairs, is an irritating distraction. Setting the stage in tumultuous Myanmar (the old Burma renamed by the military government in power) is daring and promising, but the understanding that grows between the Karen tribe and the Americans never quite pays off. While Tan’s novel could be The Canterbury Tales for the modern soul, this pilgrimage is slightly too inclined to exhaustive wandering.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
