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"It was not my fault." Socialite Bibi Chen begins her story of how her friends became lost in Burma with that disclaimer. Bibi, with her multicolored braid and strong opinions, is speaking from beyond the grave. She has been murdered, but that doesn't stop her from voicing her take on her funeral, her friends' situations, and everything else in the world.
The trip Bibi arranged to take with her friends to Burma will still happen. When her circle wishes for Bibi to join them "in spirit," she can't resist the invitation. One great side effect of being dead, she discovers, is that her emotions, so flat in life, are now lush and full-bodied --- all the better to paint a vivid picture as the story develops.
We know from the outset that Bibi's traveling companions will vanish in Burma. Part of the fun is guessing at and then discovering the chain of events that leads to their disappearance. We develop one strong suspicion after another. For example, Wendy Brookhyser, an activist, is one of the people along on the trip. Is she to blame for the problems her group runs into? Wendy plans to speak with the people under cover of being a fun-seeking tourist. She may take the information she's gathered and publish it, although she's aware that journalists are forbidden to visit Burma. If discovered gathering anti-government information, she could well be imprisoned forever.
A love story threads through this book. Harry, the star of a television show featuring dog training, yearns for the elegant Marlena. Fate intervenes between the two repeatedly and sometimes humorously: there's an incident involving candles and flammable mosquito netting, illness, Marlena's daughter's puppy, and kidnapping. And then there's Harry's well-known attraction to a revolving cast of much younger women.
Since Bibi is dead and has access to all characters' innermost thoughts, she gives an unusual all-knowing interpretation of events. For example, in one scene a man translates his love interest's reaction to him as "castrating," when in fact she actually is concentrating on the cramping dysentery she's beginning to experience deep within her bowels.
SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING is by turns a romance, an adventure story, a comedy, and a bit of educational documentary. Amy Tan weaves a fascinating tale of this band of fish-out-of-water Americans and their perceptions of life in other countries, which is so often ridiculously askew. The plot twists never fail to be surprising, and touches of the surreal (a primitive tribe watching television in the middle of a jungle and a jungle-based reality show called "Darwin's Fittest") are weirdly laugh-out-loud funny. Bibi's narration tends to wander off-course at times, which is mostly entertaining but occasionally frustrating, and made the pace of the story uneven. I also felt that some of the large cast of characters, such as Harry's buddy Moff, was not fleshed out as well as Harry and others.
Despite these minor quibbles, SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING is an excellent read, managing to keep the reader mesmerized through the nearly 500 pages.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)
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