TAN: Bibi Chen, the character, the narrator of this book, is very much like my mother. This new book is not about that kind of relationship, but Tan says her mother is still a part of it. Tan says she doesn't know yet whether or not whether she has fully explored her complicated, often difficult relationship with her mother. NEARY: Another big change in Tan's life is that her mother-who has figured so prominently in her writing-died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's. I couldn't read even two pages and remember what I had read. TAN: It was hard to concentrate, and when you can't stay focused from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph, it is hard to write a novel. The illness triggered seizures, memory loss and a devastating lack of energy. NEARY: Tan was also scared because during the writing of this novel, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease.

So there were a lot of unknowns with this book for me. I was also going to do something for the first time that wasn't so deeply personal and intimate, that had more to do with politics, in a way. AMY TAN (Author, 'Saving Fish from Drowning'): I knew that I was going to be doing something different from all the books, that it wasn't going to concern mothers and daughters or sisters, and it just scared me.

All of Tan's novels have been well-received, so this time she worried because 'Saving Fish from Drowning' is so unlike her other books. After the huge success of 'The Joy Luck Club,' she worried that her second book would be a dismal failure it wasn't. NPR's Lynn Neary reports.Īmy Tan says with every book, she has to come to terms with a new set of fears. But in her latest novel, 'Saving Fish from Drowning,' Tan leaves that territory behind, both literally and figuratively, as she tells the tale of a group of American tourists lost in Burma. With her first novel, 'The Joy Luck Club,' writer Amy Tan began to develop a loyal following of readers fascinated by her exploration of familial relationships steeped in the culture and folklore of China.

Saving fish from drowning by amy tan