book review: Saving Fish from Drowning

I have greatly enjoyed several books by Amy Tan, but this one really didn't do much for me.
I listened to it on audio, and it was read by the author, and she is a very good reader as well as writer. But...I'm not sure why...I just didn't get into this one.

It was told from the viewpoint of a dead person whose "ghost" (I guess) accompanies the tour group she had planned to lead through China and Burma before her untimely demise. The group goes missing and the reader gets to see what actually happens during their disappearance into the jungles of Burma. I had a hard time caring about any of the characters and there seemed to be a lot of gratuitous sexual stuff that IMHO didn't add any value to the story. The bigger issue was that in the end, it didn't seem there was any real movement or change or transformation that came out of the whole experience for any of the characters. Actually, the ending was kind of depressing, not in a "tragic" way that makes you think, but more in a mundane way that probably mimics the way life really is. I can get that from reading the newspaper. I want more profound take-aways from fiction. Maybe that is too much to ask, but I've gotten it from Amy Tan in the past.

I LOVED A Hundred Secret Senses and the Bone-Setter's Daughter, and the Joy Luck Club was pretty good, but this one was a disappointment.