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beastreader's review against another edition
3.0
I did like this book. Although, I found that I struggled with finding the strong emotional connection that this type of book requires.
Our young woman is a good narrator. She does bring me the reader into her world. I instantly got a good visual into what life was like for her. Therefore, I understood her "obsession" with the solider and young girl. Which in turn transpired into her new life in America.
What I struggled with is that the other characters were "faceless". In what I mean by this is that because I did not share a strong connection to the other characters, they could have been anyone. They were characters in this story but it was mainly the young woman's voice that was the star of this book for me.
Our young woman is a good narrator. She does bring me the reader into her world. I instantly got a good visual into what life was like for her. Therefore, I understood her "obsession" with the solider and young girl. Which in turn transpired into her new life in America.
What I struggled with is that the other characters were "faceless". In what I mean by this is that because I did not share a strong connection to the other characters, they could have been anyone. They were characters in this story but it was mainly the young woman's voice that was the star of this book for me.
stormblessed4's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- 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? No
4.5
jzmiao's review against another edition
3.0
i have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. i was excited by the premise, and i thought it explored important ideas about belonging and identity, but the narrator felt hollow for most of the book. maybe that was intentional as a characterization, but i didn’t feel like i knew anything about her as a person
thebooktrail88's review against another edition
3.0
Visit the locations in the novel
This is such an emotional read. I really hesitated with the star rating. For a book with these themes and subject matter, stars always seem wrong somehow. The writing was good but I struggled with the subject and it was a tough read given the violence and brutality against women.
We meet the narrator of this novel in Vietnam as she is there to meet her mother who is living in a military camp. She’s there for her own protection since she works as an energy consultant and not everyone in the country agree with what she does. This is a country where control of the people is paramount.
The daughter is looked after by a soldier who has more time to spend with her. It was really sad to see the breakdown of the relationship and the desperate need of a child to seek love from her own mother and not really get it . However what the child doesn’t know is that the mother is only cold and distant as it has been the only way to save them both. She does form a close friendship with another girl, but then has to leave her too when she manages to be smuggled out to America.
A new life beckons. And this is when we see her desperate journey of trying to fit in to a new homeland. She tries to connect with home and news of her mother. This is a sad and tricky time for her and it was interesting to see how she coped and what she went through. I was pleased when she met Lilah !
This is certainly a tale of loss and love, of heartbreak and wanting to fit in, be a part of something. It’s emotional on so many levels too. Add to that cultural differences, politics and a wide gap between freedom and duty and it’s hard to imagine.
Quite a novel. One that has ripples long after you’ve finished reading it.
nat_john05's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
xenxenwithlove's review against another edition
4.0
TW: various forms of child abuse, pedophilia; explicit scenes as well as various mentions. A good book that suffers from severely dishonest marketing.
Before anything else, this novel is about reconciling trauma, and how childhood trauma specifically seeps into every part of your life, even when you don't admit it.
Full of "magic phrases", and a stark hypocrisy that feels true to life.
By the synopsis and blurbs, I really thought this would be a novel about the experience of being a culturally split person, leaving and returning different places and never belonging fully to either. It's not. It's really a passing plot point that lends color to the novels actual themes: abandonment, isolation, and the general haunting that comes from early trauma, all wrapped in a cold acceptance that everything in life and between lives is cyclical, even the traumatic things.
Before anything else, this novel is about reconciling trauma, and how childhood trauma specifically seeps into every part of your life, even when you don't admit it.
Full of "magic phrases", and a stark hypocrisy that feels true to life.
By the synopsis and blurbs, I really thought this would be a novel about the experience of being a culturally split person, leaving and returning different places and never belonging fully to either. It's not. It's really a passing plot point that lends color to the novels actual themes: abandonment, isolation, and the general haunting that comes from early trauma, all wrapped in a cold acceptance that everything in life and between lives is cyclical, even the traumatic things.
coyotesdaughter's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- 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? Yes
4.0
kheniges's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful characters, an incredible story. Heartbreaking and compelling.
clairewords's review against another edition
3.0
A young girl joins her mother in a Vietnamese military camp at the age of four, after not seeing her for some years and struggles to connect with her in the way her heart yearns, instead becoming overly attentive to trying to please her in a way that children who can't take having parents there for them for granted might react. She succeeds in attaching herself to the solider who accompanies here whenever she has to go anywhere, even though he discourage it.
She befriends a little girl she finds stacking bricks, their time together establishes the few memories of childhood both will retain, both haunted by the last time they see each other.
In Part Two the girl is sent by her mother to America and promises to follow her there, she drifts from family connections to friends until she's outworn her welcome everywhere. She follows a stranger home because he reminds her of the solider. She befriends a young woman who reminds her of the girl. Her life seems created out of illusion, of faces that have haunted her. But she is not the only one with a past, living with the effects of trauma.
Meeting both these strangers will change the course of her life and eventually she will confront her past, revisit her home country and look for what she lost, taking with her what she has gained.
It's a hard book to describe and one that is disturbing in parts to read, laced with a sadness for a girl that it seems was unwanted, although she was given opportunities, just not love or affection, so in turn her own life seems without purpose and missing something that she can't describe.
I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed it, but it's certainly thought provoking and makes me wonder about the inspiration behind writing it, and the number of sad lives being lived by others, neither from one place nor another, without families, trying to make sense of the world.
She befriends a little girl she finds stacking bricks, their time together establishes the few memories of childhood both will retain, both haunted by the last time they see each other.
In Part Two the girl is sent by her mother to America and promises to follow her there, she drifts from family connections to friends until she's outworn her welcome everywhere. She follows a stranger home because he reminds her of the solider. She befriends a young woman who reminds her of the girl. Her life seems created out of illusion, of faces that have haunted her. But she is not the only one with a past, living with the effects of trauma.
Meeting both these strangers will change the course of her life and eventually she will confront her past, revisit her home country and look for what she lost, taking with her what she has gained.
It's a hard book to describe and one that is disturbing in parts to read, laced with a sadness for a girl that it seems was unwanted, although she was given opportunities, just not love or affection, so in turn her own life seems without purpose and missing something that she can't describe.
I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed it, but it's certainly thought provoking and makes me wonder about the inspiration behind writing it, and the number of sad lives being lived by others, neither from one place nor another, without families, trying to make sense of the world.
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