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erikalv97's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I loved the writer’s style, the constant change of tenses, narration and the really thorough descriptions.
The story itself is hard hitting, I cried several times (please check the cw!!!!)
Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Blood, Abortion, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Excrement
smillas_tales's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, and Sexual content
Moderate: Racism
snoutsiru's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Car accident, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, and War
Minor: Pregnancy
kpignuolo's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Sexual content, Violence, Xenophobia, Abortion, Alcohol, and War
fatherflapjack's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, and War
Moderate: Homophobia and Racism
smol_berry's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Grief, and Alcohol
koreanlinda's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I wasn’t trying to make a sentence—I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey. (p.4)
All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there,… But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough. (p.216)
This book fails at being a novel in a traditional sense. It is more of pieces of experiences, observations, and contemplation written most poetically and strewn together into one binding. It has its minimal structure in loosely chronological order: three parts of Little Dog’s life in childhood, adolescence, and after college. If you look for a clear storyline, you quickly get lost. It’s more effective to absorb each chapter as a lump of colors, senses, and emotions.
I am a daughter of a working-class immigrant family. What I witness in people’s lives in this fictional Hartford, CT easily disqualifies my family of that title. These people are not working-poor, they are working-dirt-poor. When we just landed in the farthest corner of Staten Island (also the farthest corner of NYC), my family lived in a side door of a multi-family house with a low ceiling and two small windows. Yet we were never starved. We were not subjected to physical violence by others or each other. We were never exposed to substance abuse or fallen into never-ending drinking.
Yet there are parts where I see myself in Little Dog’s life. I suffered from my mother’s beating when I was young, and her psychological abuse lasted a lot longer. She got a job at a nail salon, which used to be dominated by all those women new from Korea, and now taken over by those from Vietnam.
In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I’m here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable. In the nail salon, one’s definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that’s charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.
My mother often cried and drank soju after work while spitting out stories from the salon. I wanted to tell her to quit her job, but I couldn’t. What else could she do? While spending most of her waking hours there, my mother formed her ideas of people living in the United States: poor Asians and Latinas were allies; well-off Whites had everything that they didn’t earn. I completely understood her initial distrust in my White partner when he tried to enter our family.
A side note to readers who get triggered by the content of animal abuse: skip pages 38-39, 41, 43-44. There is also a talk about veal calves trapped in cages on p.216. It is short but renders an inaccurate analogy of comparing the limited freedom of the three main characters to that of the calves. The lives of Trevor, Lan, and Rose are indeed limited by their environment beyond their control, but the range of their free will is significantly bigger than that of a veal calf. Also, the veal calves never become a perpetrator of violence themselves, unlike humans.
Review by Linda (she/they) in Jan. 2022
Twitter @KoreanLindaPark
Letter writer at DefinitelyNotOkay.com
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Sexual violence, and Death of parent
Moderate: Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Xenophobia, and Classism
annajanen's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Violence, and War
Minor: Addiction, Animal death, and Cancer
paperbackparker's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Really don’t understand why descriptions of animal cruelty had to pop up so often though.
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, and Sexual content
darbo's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The beautiful and literate way Vuong always weaves in and out of referencing past pages, finding metaphors and allegories for everything he describes; and even the references he makes are just so dazzling and elegant. I'd even go so far as to call this magical and truly stunning, in the most literal sense of the word. I'm not kidding when I say that this book gave me more goosebumps at every page turn than movies or music have.
The portrayal of life in Vietnam, stigmatized life in America as a Vietnamese, and the life they're being forced to lead due to social prejudices and said stigmata is just so so heartbreaking; how his 'Ma' cannot read and how he's having to read everything to and for her, but the way he then creates white lies about some things to make it easier for her is super super poignant and touching; and the fact that it's in dedication to Ocean Vuong's actual mother is just super sincere, mindful, charming and dare I say it, gorgeous. This was one of the easiest 5-stars I've ever given a book. My compliments to the chef. I'll definitely read anything and everything Ocean Vuong publishes. Highly recommend it!
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Racism
Moderate: Sexual content