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annieni's review against another edition
Wow, this is an utterly depressing fever dream. The beginning is especially hard to get through as she remembers her early days with Thụy and her parents. You can feel the resentment, despair, and loneliness jumping off from the pages; she's on the edge of a mental breakdown every second of her life, but she has to keep it somewhat together for her child Vĩnh, but at the same time she's not keeping it together much at all. The sinophonbia + love for France from her parents made me laugh in a defeated (?) way - yeah, I know that all too much with my own family.
Overall, I enjoyed it and liked the format that Thuận chose to present the story in.
Overall, I enjoyed it and liked the format that Thuận chose to present the story in.
stephxsu's review against another edition
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
I will always give translated Vietnamese lit a try, given how rare they are to find. And oh, try I did with this book, but I'm not sure it was worth the struggle.
CHINATOWN opens with a Vietnamese mother and her sleeping son stuck on a Paris metro that's stopped because of a suspected bomb on board. But that doesn't really matter, because the unnamed narrator takes overthinking to new heights. CHINATOWN is 150+ pages of stream-of-consciousness, toggling back and forth between past, present, and imagined future with no warning. Paragraphing is not a thing, so it felt like reading 300 pages, not 150.
The narrator retraces the memories of her failed relationship with Thụy, her former lover and husband, over and over. Thụy comes from an ethnically Chinese Vietnamese family, a community that is not small by any means in Vietnam, but who, particularly in the Communist North, are subject to endless bullying, alienation, discrimination, and xenophobia. The narrator's decision to stay with Thụy dismays her cold and ambitious parents, who never acknowledge their marriage. Unfortunately, something--we never actually find out the specifics--happens between the couple. Thụy, tired of the constant discrimination in Hanoi that prevents him from being able to make a living, moves down south to Saigon's Chợ Lớn, aka Chinatown, with its larger ethnic Chinese community. Heartbroken, the narrator takes Vĩnh and moves to France to live an isolated life and teach in the suburbs of Paris.
The narrator, unfortunately, reads very passive, and the potential for other themes to take center stage kind of get drowned in her patheticness. Many times I wanted to slap some sense into her. Girl, don't waste 12 years of your life pining after a former lover who has never reached out to you! You deserve better!
I felt that the stronger bits of the story were when she is reflecting on her straightjacketed childhood at the hands of her parents--parents who poured all of their ambitions and none of their love into their only child. It was interesting to me to note that all the ethnic discrimination that defines so many people's lives in Vietnam all fall away overseas, when locals can't distinguish between Asian ethnicities and everyone gets lumped together as "Asian."
There is something in CHINATOWN about the alienation of migration, and immigrant dreams and pressures. Unfortunately, its potential is buried beneath its unwelcoming format.
CHINATOWN opens with a Vietnamese mother and her sleeping son stuck on a Paris metro that's stopped because of a suspected bomb on board. But that doesn't really matter, because the unnamed narrator takes overthinking to new heights. CHINATOWN is 150+ pages of stream-of-consciousness, toggling back and forth between past, present, and imagined future with no warning. Paragraphing is not a thing, so it felt like reading 300 pages, not 150.
The narrator retraces the memories of her failed relationship with Thụy, her former lover and husband, over and over. Thụy comes from an ethnically Chinese Vietnamese family, a community that is not small by any means in Vietnam, but who, particularly in the Communist North, are subject to endless bullying, alienation, discrimination, and xenophobia. The narrator's decision to stay with Thụy dismays her cold and ambitious parents, who never acknowledge their marriage. Unfortunately, something--we never actually find out the specifics--happens between the couple. Thụy, tired of the constant discrimination in Hanoi that prevents him from being able to make a living, moves down south to Saigon's Chợ Lớn, aka Chinatown, with its larger ethnic Chinese community. Heartbroken, the narrator takes Vĩnh and moves to France to live an isolated life and teach in the suburbs of Paris.
The narrator, unfortunately, reads very passive, and the potential for other themes to take center stage kind of get drowned in her patheticness. Many times I wanted to slap some sense into her. Girl, don't waste 12 years of your life pining after a former lover who has never reached out to you! You deserve better!
I felt that the stronger bits of the story were when she is reflecting on her straightjacketed childhood at the hands of her parents--parents who poured all of their ambitions and none of their love into their only child. It was interesting to me to note that all the ethnic discrimination that defines so many people's lives in Vietnam all fall away overseas, when locals can't distinguish between Asian ethnicities and everyone gets lumped together as "Asian."
There is something in CHINATOWN about the alienation of migration, and immigrant dreams and pressures. Unfortunately, its potential is buried beneath its unwelcoming format.
saburat's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
we have a lot of thoughts in our head about this book but for now i'm going to say we're very glad that we picked it up
jtisgreen's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
ninafroms's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
aimeesteph's review against another edition
5.0
This book was absolutely beautiful and had me in a trace. The repetition and use of numbers just makes you lose yourself. The story is beautifully written, the story of a woman’s love for her child, her husband, her home country, and the struggles she faces as a migrant in Russia and France. I learnt so much about Vietnamese culture, and the exploration of Vietnamese-Chinese relationships.
maketeaa's review
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
i don't believe i've ever read a book in such a fluid, hallucinatory style before, sentences running on like streams of water following their own course. and yet somehow thuan creates something poignant and cohesive, a story that feels almost inevitable in the way that it arises from what may otherwise look like a maze of jumbled thoughts. taking place in the mind of the narrator during a suspected bomb threat on the métro, thuan traces her experiences as a diasporic vietnamese woman -- from her early days in vietnam, to her studies in leningrad, to her present dwellings in paris. throughout it all, memories of her old love, thuy, linger in the bridges between each thought, each feeling, from his discrimination in vietnam for being half-chinese, to the conflict of her parents' involvement in her Future (with a capital F) and their disapproval of him, to her son's sense of ethnic identity in paris, as well as her own ethnic identity as part of the diaspora -- if her neighbours call her madame Au and her documents say madame Au and chinatown is a daily part of her life then, therefore, should she not also be an Au? to what extent is her ethnic identity the same as which she had been born into when it has been reshaped by so many different molds? thuan delves into the running thoughts of the narrator as a way to show the deep-seated nature of diasporic conflict, and the way it forms the foundation of the experience of any such individual.
moreadsabook's review against another edition
slow-paced
2.0
God, I wanted to enjoy this but I guess stream of consciousness writing really isn't for me. There were things here that I enjoyed in other novels (the repetition and back and forth flashbacks like in At Night All Blood is Black and the kind of mundaneness and quiet contemplations on life and relationships like in Cold Enough for Snow) but the style this is written in really pulled me out of it throughout my whole reading experience and I just came out confused.
victoriathuyvi's review against another edition
4.0
A really difficult book to read due to the lack of paragraph breaks and intentionally repetitive style. Not enjoyable, but meaningful.
3 for enjoyment, 4 for content. Rounded up.
3 for enjoyment, 4 for content. Rounded up.
dexdexgoose's review against another edition
I want to come back to this book, I’ve just gotten into a couple of others and lost my place