Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034549394X ISBN 13: 9780345493941

Synopsis

“A rollicking, adventure-filled story . . . packed [with] the human capacity for love.”
–USA Today

“A superbly executed, good-hearted farce that is part romance and part mystery . . . With Tan’s many talents on display, it’s her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations . . . that make this book pure pleasure.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco art patron Bibi Chen has planned a journey of the senses along the famed Burma Road for eleven lucky friends. But after her mysterious death, Bibi watches aghast from her ghostly perch as the travelers veer off her itinerary and embark on a trail paved with cultural gaffes and tribal curses, Buddhist illusions and romantic desires. On Christmas morning, the tourists cruise across a misty lake and disappear.

With picaresque characters and mesmerizing imagery, Saving Fish from Drowning gives us a voice as idiosyncratic, sharp, and affectionate as the mothers of The Joy Luck Club. Bibi is the observant eye of human nature–the witness of good intentions and bad outcomes, of desperate souls and those who wish to save them. In the end, Tan takes her readers to that place in their own heart where hope is found.


“Amy Tan is among our great storytellers.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Amy Tan has created an almost magical adventure that, page by page, becomes a metaphor for human relationships.”
–Isabel Allende

“With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and (of course) their consequences.”
–Elle

“A book that’s easy to read and hard to forget.”
–Newsweek


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

Review

‘An exciting, funny and thought-provoking story...a masterful novel.’ Telegraph

‘One can only admire Amy Tan for striking out into unchartered artistic lands.’ Sarah Churchwell, Times Literary Supplement

‘Sparkling...a very funny book.’ Metro

‘Tan’s compelling portrait of a drowning humanity, pain seeks us out in our hiding places, however far we would run.’ Observer

'She is a dazzling storyteller, equally adroit at negotiating the pitfalls of Ruth's freewheeling partnership with Art and recreating traditional family life in rural China, with its superstition, ritual and social hierarchies. The Bonesetter's Daughter celebrates the importance of family history, in particular the stories shared between mother and daughter, and makes an unobtrusive plea for the right of all human beings, however humble or displaced, to an informed, sensitive and patient hearing.' Literary Review

'Could there be a better model for writers today than Amy Tan? She tells great stories with powerful themes: love, belonging, exile, death, compassion. She moves easily between pathos, comedy and joy. She never shows off – the technique is so perfect it is invisible. She is that rare, enviable creature, a literary novelist who writes bestsellers.
This is great tragic writing, looking at the worst of human experience with a compassionate and understanding eye. I doubt if any writer alive is capable of telling such a story.’ Scotland on Sunday

From the Publisher

6 Hours, 5 CDs - Abridged

Edition details

• Publication date: 1854
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 034549394X
• ISBN 13: 9780345493941
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 512