Saving Fish From Drowning

A couple weeks ago, I finished this new book by Amy Tan, which just came out a little while ago. I saw it for the first time in mid November and immediately bought it because of my past enjoyment of her novels. I discovered her when we had to read The Joy Luck Club for Academic Decathlon and I enjoyed it so much that I kept reading her novels (well, not the children's stuff she wrote).

This particular book was quite a departure from her previous ones, and I'm unhappy to say that it wasn't a good novel. I finished only because I'm anal and believe in finishing every book I start. Tan dropped the mostly light-hearted tone of her previous books, although there were occasionally snippets of humor here and decided to write about an ill-fated trip to Burma (based on real events) rather than on the experiences of Chinese-American families which drew very well on her own background (presumably, some of that stuff had some very loose basis in episodes from her life and those of people she knos) and were all quite enjoyable. This book, on the other hand, was tedious and I never got into it at all. The characters were all fake, and it wasn't just that they had flaws but were still likable. They were reminiscent of the type of fake person I saw all the time growing up in Beverly Hills, and I really can't sympathize with such people. Many of Tan's characters in her other novels were as insecure as the ones here, but somehow they could be likable and Tan didn't endeavor to take things too seriously the way she seemed to here.

Here is a link to the Amazon page for the novel, which I am including because of the reviews it contains. Apparently, I am not the only one who was grievously disappointed by this book.

Before this book, I automatically bought new fiction by Amy Tan (except for the stuff written for children) when it came out, but now I'm definitely going to check things out before I make the purchase. This novel was a complete dud. (Now I'm reading the third book in the Death Gate cycle, which is much better and is helping me wash the bad taste from my mouth.)