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readinggrrl's review against another edition
2.0
There is no doubt that Vu Tran has a promising career ahead of him. He can write vivid beautiful scenes and dark and dangerous ones. However I was left a little lost in this book. Written with alternating chapters, one by Robert the cop pushing boundaries to find his ex-wife and one from someone writing in a diary. At first I thought this diary entry was from Suzy's mother but then I realized it was actually Suzy herself who was writing her story of fleeing Vietnam, surviving the boat ride, and ultimately ending up in America.
This is definitely a very noir novel, from the cop who finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into the dark underworld to the missing woman and Suzy's violent husband who is blackmailing Robert into helping to find her. I guess I just expected a bit more and the ending was unsatisfying and left things still shrouded in mystery. There was a lot to like about the writing but I just wasn't a huge fan of the story.
This is definitely a very noir novel, from the cop who finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into the dark underworld to the missing woman and Suzy's violent husband who is blackmailing Robert into helping to find her. I guess I just expected a bit more and the ending was unsatisfying and left things still shrouded in mystery. There was a lot to like about the writing but I just wasn't a huge fan of the story.
lisaarnsdorf's review against another edition
3.0
I'm baffled by this book. I can't decide if I liked it or hated it. I found it wildly unsatisfying. It was not really a mystery. I suppose it's a thriller. I won't even discuss the ending, which had me turning pages to see if I had a bad copy that was missing chapters.
I enjoyed the glimpse into life in Vietnam before, during, and after the war, and the challenges of getting to refugee camps and then to America. I would have liked more of that.
I found Suzy/Hong to be a strange character. She only speaks for herself in the few letters she writes to the person she leaves behind. We almost exclusively hear about her through descriptions from other characters. This in particular bothered me because they weren't flashbacks where Suzy/Hong was an active participant in the story; the characters were telling the reader about her. Every time a Suzy/Hong story was told, I wanted to tell at the writer, "Show, don't tell!" You never got a chance to learn what Suzy/Hong's motivations were, you could only guess. And what we were left with was a woman who was greatly affected by the Vietnam War, and because of it went crazy . . . I think. Her behavior was bizarre, and because we didn't hear directly from her, we never got to learn why she was acting the way she was.
I never connected with any of the other characters, so I didn't really care what happened to them. Everyone was so flawed it was difficult to identify with them, or feel any sympathy for their plights.
I feel the same after having finished the book as I did initially after starting it - confused.
I enjoyed the glimpse into life in Vietnam before, during, and after the war, and the challenges of getting to refugee camps and then to America. I would have liked more of that.
I found Suzy/Hong to be a strange character. She only speaks for herself in the few letters she writes to the person she leaves behind. We almost exclusively hear about her through descriptions from other characters. This in particular bothered me because they weren't flashbacks where Suzy/Hong was an active participant in the story; the characters were telling the reader about her. Every time a Suzy/Hong story was told, I wanted to tell at the writer, "Show, don't tell!" You never got a chance to learn what Suzy/Hong's motivations were, you could only guess. And what we were left with was a woman who was greatly affected by the Vietnam War, and because of it went crazy . . . I think. Her behavior was bizarre, and because we didn't hear directly from her, we never got to learn why she was acting the way she was.
I never connected with any of the other characters, so I didn't really care what happened to them. Everyone was so flawed it was difficult to identify with them, or feel any sympathy for their plights.
I feel the same after having finished the book as I did initially after starting it - confused.
saenz's review
seemed kinda racist with the way the main character talked about asian people. Also not interested in a story about a white cop
nonna7's review against another edition
4.0
This book is out of the norm for me, and I'm glad it was. It's listed as a crime novel, but it is so much more. The story centers around Suzy, a haunting and haunted woman, who is married to Robert, a police officer. However, she can't let go of her first husband or the man she loved after that as a Vietnamese refugee. Robert is forced to look for her by her current husband, Sonny, a Vietnamese refugee and gangster. It is a violent look at violent people and yet, somehow, you don't see them as the multifaceted characters they are. There is too much going on in this novel to give more than just a brief synopsis. This is a dark novel that talks about what happens to people who are confronted with war and upheaval written in the tradition of Chandler and other noir authors.
bexapril1's review against another edition
1.0
I had hoped this would be an interesting and new take on the noir detective novel but instead it was just the same misogynistic crap. Disappointing.
leiannasaur's review against another edition
3.0
A bit disappointing but compelling enough for me to finish. I think what interested me was that I found the main character (Robert) to be so clearly unlikable that it drew attention to the faults in the ways white America can interact with Asian immigrants. The biggest “oof” was him constantly referring to his ex-wife with an American name that HE gave her. It literally made me cringe every time I read the name. It does a good job of highlighting the trauma of immigration (that isn’t often addressed from a first person point of view).
I felt like there were a lot of interesting story strings that ended up nowhere. I would read this author again, though. I really hope he writes from a Vietnamese/Asian person’s point of view in his next novel because those parts were the strongest part of the novel.
I felt like there were a lot of interesting story strings that ended up nowhere. I would read this author again, though. I really hope he writes from a Vietnamese/Asian person’s point of view in his next novel because those parts were the strongest part of the novel.
pridiansky's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
First thing's first, as usual. This cover is abominably bad. It's like if a kid was taking a multimedia class in high school and this was one of their first shitty photoshop edits. I mean, come on. What the hell is up with this cheap-ass cover??? It's an embarrassment, and if I was the author and didn't have any control over the cover (usually they don't), then I would be pissed that the novel I took such care in writing was dressed up in this tacky gradient number with a random Asian woman with her hair all squiggly, like it was pasted in there totally slapdash, with absolutely no thought invested. Ugly ugly ugly. I wish there was an underline feature to emphasize my distaste. And there are no alternate covers, so you can't even buy a different edition. A poor cover can kill a book's success. If I saw this in a bookshop, cover facing out, I would ignore it (I got this from a one dollar shelf at my local college library.)
As far as the story goes, a warning: If you like stories that wrap up cleanly, don't pick this book up. None of the characters are likeable and there are no heroes. They're all very flawed and human. The ending wraps up in a true-to-life way where sometimes we don't always "solve the mystery" like in Sherlock Holmes. The main character we follow in the present is left in the dark about a lot of things and has to deal with it alone. You as the reader are privy to more information than he is, but there is still a lot of information that we never find out about, either. I believe this was the intention of the author, as the character who ran away didn't want to be found and got her wish in the end.
***Spoilers Ahead***
There are two perspectives in this book; One is the present, where we're following Robert, a cop whose wife divorced him and ran away to Vegas to be with another man. Spoiler alert: He hasn't gotten over it. The other perspective takes place in the past, following the Vietnamese woman who left him. The chapters in her perspective are actually letters to the daughter she abandoned, explaining why she did what she did. I will warn you that the choice was made to put these chapters in italics, probably to give it a handwritten quality. That didn't bother me, but if that annoys you, you might not enjoy reading it. For me personally, her chapters were compelling and pulled me into the story the most. The chapters in the present with Robert were a bit boring at times, mostly because Robert pissed me off. Frankly, he's an emotionally maladjusted dumbass. He's not sympathetic and I didn't care about his feelings. I don't think he was meant to be likeable, but he reeks of Privileged White Man and Entitled Cop Energy. Consider those his official titles. The dude is an insufferable dickhead, but so full of self-righteousness. The epitome of Dunning-Kreuger, he's just so fucking stupid and has the emotional intelligence of a tick, but he is so dumb that he can't understand how dumb he is. There's some hardcore White-Knighting going on with his character where he thinks he's going to save this woman from her current husband because he's abusive and dangerous, even though he's hardly any better. Everything that he's doing is for himself. He thinks that he cares about his ex-wife so much, but he just wants the self satisfaction of being the one who can "fix" her or possess her. He can't even call her by her real fucking name, and insists on using the name Suzy (For fuck's sake, SUZY?? Really?? The literal worst name ever. I apologize to anyone with the name Suzy, but damn). Get this, the name was taken from A PREVIOUS GIRLFRIEND!!! He named her after someone he used to date!! How fucking degrading is that? Just because he doesn't want to call her by her real name because the name Hong is, according to him, a name that could be made fun of in a sexual way in America. My ass, buddy. Ugh, he is such a douchebag. Fuck you, Robert. You don't just get to rename someone like they're a pet dog that you adopted from the Humane Society. He calls her Suzy til the very end. He never changes his tune, which means that he learned absolutely nothing. He doesn't care about Hong at all. He only cares about his own selfish needs and his lack of closure. I was stoked that he was sad and alone still by the end of the book. It was fantastic to have it end with him wallowing and feeling sorry for himself indefinitely. My compliments to the author. Gave me the warm fuzzies, hahahaha.
I hemmed and hawwed over a rating for this book, but decided on a 4. There are things that I connected with and enjoyed, particularly the way the character of Hong was portrayed. This character is an absolute mess and I felt that her trauma and instability were so well written. A lot of people have said how they didn't understand or like this character, but I found her so identifiable and I deeply sympathized with her pain.
This is a character who never had the opportunity to live her own life or make her own decisions. More specifically, all the men in her life want her to be something she's not, even her first husband who she loved and missed after he died. She doesn't want a child and ends up having one before she's even mentally an adult herself. There's a powerful quote there where she says:
"It should have felt natural, invigorating, as it would for any woman, but for me it was like a sudden and incurable affliction. I had only recently been given a brand-new version of myself to walk around in, and just when I started to feel comfortable inside it, I was forced into yet another version that seemed not only alien but unbearably permanent. Once you became a reality inside me, I knew I could never go back to being anything else.
Your father, however, immediately wrote his family and went about building a new crib and a bigger dining table, and three or four times a day he playfully caressed my flat belly as though the bump was already there. Before you ever actually existed, you were already the center of his life."
The men in Hong's life don't value her for herself. They project their wants and needs onto her and assume that she feels the same. They don't ask what she wants, and on the rare occasion when they do ask, they don't actually want to know. Life just happens to Hong and it is clear as day how smothered and trapped she feels in these situations. She's never living, but is instead doing her best to survive in the circumstances that have been forced upon her. A lot of the reviews were annoyed with the ending, because we never find out what happens to her or where she went. But, that's what the character wanted, so I was deeply satisfied with the ending. She FINALLY got what she wanted after all that time. A chance to maybe start her life fresh and live for herself without all of the shackles of the past tugging her to the bottom, and without all these disgusting men molding her into their ideal subservient woman with no thoughts and desires of her own. It's implied that she escapes back to Vietnam, the only place that ever really felt like home to her. Since the ending is left so open, it is my wish that Hong can now live the life that she wants and can heal. The rest of the characters feel irrelevant to me.
As far as the story goes, a warning: If you like stories that wrap up cleanly, don't pick this book up. None of the characters are likeable and there are no heroes. They're all very flawed and human. The ending wraps up in a true-to-life way where sometimes we don't always "solve the mystery" like in Sherlock Holmes. The main character we follow in the present is left in the dark about a lot of things and has to deal with it alone. You as the reader are privy to more information than he is, but there is still a lot of information that we never find out about, either. I believe this was the intention of the author, as the character who ran away didn't want to be found and got her wish in the end.
***Spoilers Ahead***
There are two perspectives in this book; One is the present, where we're following Robert, a cop whose wife divorced him and ran away to Vegas to be with another man. Spoiler alert: He hasn't gotten over it. The other perspective takes place in the past, following the Vietnamese woman who left him. The chapters in her perspective are actually letters to the daughter she abandoned, explaining why she did what she did. I will warn you that the choice was made to put these chapters in italics, probably to give it a handwritten quality. That didn't bother me, but if that annoys you, you might not enjoy reading it. For me personally, her chapters were compelling and pulled me into the story the most. The chapters in the present with Robert were a bit boring at times, mostly because Robert pissed me off. Frankly, he's an emotionally maladjusted dumbass. He's not sympathetic and I didn't care about his feelings. I don't think he was meant to be likeable, but he reeks of Privileged White Man and Entitled Cop Energy. Consider those his official titles. The dude is an insufferable dickhead, but so full of self-righteousness. The epitome of Dunning-Kreuger, he's just so fucking stupid and has the emotional intelligence of a tick, but he is so dumb that he can't understand how dumb he is. There's some hardcore White-Knighting going on with his character where he thinks he's going to save this woman from her current husband because he's abusive and dangerous, even though he's hardly any better. Everything that he's doing is for himself. He thinks that he cares about his ex-wife so much, but he just wants the self satisfaction of being the one who can "fix" her or possess her. He can't even call her by her real fucking name, and insists on using the name Suzy (For fuck's sake, SUZY?? Really?? The literal worst name ever. I apologize to anyone with the name Suzy, but damn). Get this, the name was taken from A PREVIOUS GIRLFRIEND!!! He named her after someone he used to date!! How fucking degrading is that? Just because he doesn't want to call her by her real name because the name Hong is, according to him, a name that could be made fun of in a sexual way in America. My ass, buddy. Ugh, he is such a douchebag. Fuck you, Robert. You don't just get to rename someone like they're a pet dog that you adopted from the Humane Society. He calls her Suzy til the very end. He never changes his tune, which means that he learned absolutely nothing. He doesn't care about Hong at all. He only cares about his own selfish needs and his lack of closure. I was stoked that he was sad and alone still by the end of the book. It was fantastic to have it end with him wallowing and feeling sorry for himself indefinitely. My compliments to the author. Gave me the warm fuzzies, hahahaha.
I hemmed and hawwed over a rating for this book, but decided on a 4. There are things that I connected with and enjoyed, particularly the way the character of Hong was portrayed. This character is an absolute mess and I felt that her trauma and instability were so well written. A lot of people have said how they didn't understand or like this character, but I found her so identifiable and I deeply sympathized with her pain.
This is a character who never had the opportunity to live her own life or make her own decisions. More specifically, all the men in her life want her to be something she's not, even her first husband who she loved and missed after he died. She doesn't want a child and ends up having one before she's even mentally an adult herself. There's a powerful quote there where she says:
"It should have felt natural, invigorating, as it would for any woman, but for me it was like a sudden and incurable affliction. I had only recently been given a brand-new version of myself to walk around in, and just when I started to feel comfortable inside it, I was forced into yet another version that seemed not only alien but unbearably permanent. Once you became a reality inside me, I knew I could never go back to being anything else.
Your father, however, immediately wrote his family and went about building a new crib and a bigger dining table, and three or four times a day he playfully caressed my flat belly as though the bump was already there. Before you ever actually existed, you were already the center of his life."
The men in Hong's life don't value her for herself. They project their wants and needs onto her and assume that she feels the same. They don't ask what she wants, and on the rare occasion when they do ask, they don't actually want to know. Life just happens to Hong and it is clear as day how smothered and trapped she feels in these situations. She's never living, but is instead doing her best to survive in the circumstances that have been forced upon her. A lot of the reviews were annoyed with the ending, because we never find out what happens to her or where she went. But, that's what the character wanted, so I was deeply satisfied with the ending. She FINALLY got what she wanted after all that time. A chance to maybe start her life fresh and live for herself without all of the shackles of the past tugging her to the bottom, and without all these disgusting men molding her into their ideal subservient woman with no thoughts and desires of her own. It's implied that she escapes back to Vietnam, the only place that ever really felt like home to her. Since the ending is left so open, it is my wish that Hong can now live the life that she wants and can heal. The rest of the characters feel irrelevant to me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Violence, and Murder
Minor: Abandonment
meganashleyy7's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jakewritesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
This is the second book I’ve read in the last three years on Vietnamese immigrants to the US and both have been good in different ways. Dragonfish isn’t in the same league as The Sympathizer, the latter being the best thing I’ve read this decade. But it’s still a good book and if these two books provide a baseline quality for Vietnamese-American writers, I need to be checking out more of their work.
I almost returned Dragonfish to the library before even reading it because the GoodReads reviews were…well they were not good. And GoodReads is usually a decent barometer for me to decide what I should and shouldn’t invest my time in. But since it’s not a long read, I figured I’d give it a try and I’m glad I did.
A lot of people peg this as an experimental novel. I’m not sure that’s the case. It made me think a little of Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las Vegas but its not nearly as strange as that book was. Really, it’s a conventional missing persons tale coupled with flashbacks. We’re not too sure where the flashbacks are coming from at first; Vu Tran is good at misdirection. But eventually, everything makes sense and it tells a familiar tale.
Being familiar doesn’t mean it’s not good. I found the backstory of Hong (aka Suzie) played out quite well over the course of the novel. Robert, the main character searching for his ex-wife for reasons that later become clear, is kind of a blank slate but the story isn’t really about him and Vu Tran is a good enough writer to realize this. There are edges that could have been smoothed to make the story more effective but that’s more of a quibble.
What Vu Tran does do well for a first writer is present sparse, crisp prose. There’s not a wasted word and that made for a smooth read, letting the story drive momentum to its conclusion (which I loved but apparently others don’t). It’s a good effort from a rookie who seems to already have found his voice. I hope he comes out with more books.
I almost returned Dragonfish to the library before even reading it because the GoodReads reviews were…well they were not good. And GoodReads is usually a decent barometer for me to decide what I should and shouldn’t invest my time in. But since it’s not a long read, I figured I’d give it a try and I’m glad I did.
A lot of people peg this as an experimental novel. I’m not sure that’s the case. It made me think a little of Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las Vegas but its not nearly as strange as that book was. Really, it’s a conventional missing persons tale coupled with flashbacks. We’re not too sure where the flashbacks are coming from at first; Vu Tran is good at misdirection. But eventually, everything makes sense and it tells a familiar tale.
Being familiar doesn’t mean it’s not good. I found the backstory of Hong (aka Suzie) played out quite well over the course of the novel. Robert, the main character searching for his ex-wife for reasons that later become clear, is kind of a blank slate but the story isn’t really about him and Vu Tran is a good enough writer to realize this. There are edges that could have been smoothed to make the story more effective but that’s more of a quibble.
What Vu Tran does do well for a first writer is present sparse, crisp prose. There’s not a wasted word and that made for a smooth read, letting the story drive momentum to its conclusion (which I loved but apparently others don’t). It’s a good effort from a rookie who seems to already have found his voice. I hope he comes out with more books.
tea__'s review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse
Moderate: Racism and Xenophobia
Minor: Confinement, Rape, and War