Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - The Sympathizer

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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

47 reviews

fluoresensitive's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Tw; rape, so ... So many unsettling things
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Beautifully written, but shockingly anti-Black at times. Not to mention the two rapes that take place, oof.

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maramergens's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Loveable characters? No

2.0

I can respect a lot of this book, especially the parts about the Asian American experience, but it was gruesome and sad and not very enjoyable to read. I honestly am confused why reviews have it listed as funny, even as a fan of dark humor I didn’t find anything in this book funny at all.

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bookscoffeehayley's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

CW: rape, xenophobia, racial slurs, sexism, homophobia

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer was such an interesting read. I really enjoyed going into the mind of our unnamed protagonist. The writing style of this book is so wonderful.

This may make me a dumb reader, but it took me a bit to get into a groove with reading this book because there are no quotations. It was jarring at first, but once I got used to it, I started to really enjoy this stylistic decision.

I don’t know a lot about the Vietnam War. I vaguely remember learning about it in the general sense in school, but it always fell at the end of the year and I felt like we rushed through it. This book was an eye-opening novel to read about the war, specifically from the Vietnamese perspective. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel, The Committed that hit shelves earlier this month. I also grabbed Nguyen’s short story collection, The Refugees, from the library and look forward to reading it as well.

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leah_alexandra's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny reflective medium-paced

4.0

Nearly 5 stars if not for some spoiler content below. The writing is phenomenal. The narrative is gripping and really creates a sense of forward momentum that makes it hard to put the book down.

This book was 5 stars for me until the scene where the female agent is raped at the end. I fully understand that rape and sexual torture are unfortunately not an uncommon part of military activity, and do not object to depicting that content in books. However, this scene was used as the pivotal event in "helping" the narrator complete his "reeducation," and I am uncomfortable with the use of rape/sexual torture as primarily a device that moves another (male) character's story forward.

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thebookdog's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

** spoiler alert ** Trigger warning: This post contains mentions of rape, sexual assault, and violence.

I finished reading ‘The Sympathizer’ this evening, and I am struggling to process the last couple of chapters. Before I talk about what bothered me, I would like to state for the record that I found the book enlightening, and this is my first ‘Vietnam War Novel’, which I learnt is a genre by itself. The book made me look up, and read more about the Vietnam War, the fall of Saigon, and the draconian acts committed by all sides. Perhaps, the narrator would agree with me for including the expression ‘...by all sides’. The book was what the synopsis promised. In parts, it was a comedy, and in many parts, it was a tragedy. The writing burned with the fire of creativity. Until I started reading the last few chapters, I almost had no complaints. But what bothered me almost at the end was how a rape was written.

Here is some context: the nameless narrator of the novel fought with the Auteur (a filmmaker in the novel) with all his soul, about the inclusion of a rape scene in the movie that was being made on the Vietnam War. I found myself rooting for the narrator because I thought he made a valid point about the way the rape was portrayed in the movie, and above all, he questioned the need to include such a scene in the first place for mere shock value. While the narrator was a man of questionable character, his question was the most reasonable. So, what shocked me was the author, who —through the narrator — reprimanded Hollywood for exploiting wars, and their portrayal of the oppressed, and the survivors, included a chapter at the end in which a Communist agent was raped. As an involved reader, I didn’t find that decision of this author’s very different from the Auteur’s. I was appalled even more by that chapter in which the rape was narrated from a man’s point of view, and it was not much different from how the rape scene was shot for the movie. The chapter and the scene were classic examples of men’s one-dimensional understanding of rape.

I read many reviews, but there wasn’t any mention about this particular chapter. So, I extended my search using a particular set of key words, and I stumbled upon this article. https://www.publicbooks.org/rememberi...

Here is an excerpt:
The interviewer: ‘The Sympathizer’ ends with a rape scene. What are the ethics of including rape as a plot point in a novel?

The author: The novel is divided into two parts: the first part is the farce, and the second part is the tragedy. The farce ends with the making of the movie in the Philippines, which includes a rape scene. It’s filmed during that time period, but it’s a delayed mechanism in the novel: we don’t get to see that until later, and it’s also a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen in the narrator’s own mind. I wanted to put the cinematic rape in there because those things happen in the American imagination of the war, and I find them very problematic.

This exposes me to a reasonable criticism: if you found it to be so problematic in Hollywood films, why did you replicate it in your novel, both in terms of depicting it cinematically and in the plot of your own novel, in the narrator’s story as well? That’s a very good question, and a very good criticism. I felt that I needed to include those scenes because of the character that I had constructed, and because of the spy narrative that I had chosen. The Sympathizer is a first-person narrative from the point of view of someone who is very masculine, very misogynistic, very sexist. From his point of view, there would be no way to depict something like this that would offer a critical take on the rape, so the reader just has to see it happen.

Why did it have to be rape? Could I have chosen something else? Two-thirds of the way through the novel, I realized who my narrator was. I liked him a lot, even though he was a complicated character. But I also had to understand that he was misogynistic and masculine, and that I was enjoying that as a writer, which made me question why I was enjoying that as a writer. I wanted to show that the misogyny and the sexism that he takes pleasure in, which some readers presumably also take pleasure in, exists on a spectrum.

At one extreme of that is going to be the most atrocious expression of masculinity and misogyny, which is sexual violence. He had to be confronted with that, I had to be confronted with that, and readers who took pleasure in the objectification of women that he participates in had to be confronted with that. Once I had made certain formal decisions—spy novel, first-person narration, masculine and misogynist narrator—a rape was, I felt, the logical conclusion. If I didn’t go there, I would be making a mistake, and if I did go there, I would be making a lot of people uncomfortable—but that is actually what they should feel.

End of excerpt.

There are quite a few problems with the author’s view. My main problem though is the readers, who are misogynistic, sexist, and masculine would forget the rape just like the nameless narrator who had conveniently pushed the memory to the darkest part of his mind. Even after encountering such a cruel act, during his time in the USA, he continued to objectify women, including his quasi love-interest Sofia, and the General’s daughter Lana. Despite being a witness of a woman being dehumanised, the character arc proves that the nameless narrator didn’t change for the better. His resistance to not include the rape scene in the movie, now I realise, was his feeble effort to absolve himself of the guilt that he was harbouring, and not because he found the portrayal of women problematic. So, the author’s decision to include the rape at the end comes across as an element included for shock value, and that makes me sad. As a reader, as a woman, I place a lot of faith in politically sensitive authors like Viet Thanh Nguyen, but they continue to fail me when it comes to representation. Like the nameless narrator who failed to get the right representation for his people in the movie that the Auteur made, the author failed as well.

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maryryan's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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dyannareads's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I was worried about this one because to be honest, my dad is a Vietnam war veteran so many of my feelings about the war were associated with his history with it. (*Those feelings being about HIS suffering and sacrifices, nothing more). That being said, the author wanted to give a different perspective than we are use to, a voice to the Vietnamese during this time. It was very moving for me to see what “The American War” felt like to those in Vietnam and refugees in America afterward. It was definitely a perspective I didn’t know I needed.

This one is dark and witty and the main character was often sarcastic with his harsh truths. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this story but it was truly insightful and compelling, forcing me to think past the tunnel vision I’ve had regarding American veterans of this war. It also forced me to look up a lot of Vietnamese history as well as both Vietnam’s and America’s role in the war.

We talk a lot about identities on here and especially books where you can relate to the identity of the main character. Well, the main character of this one is filled with dualities. Imagine being a North Vietnam mole in the South Vietnam army. Imagine on top of that being both French and Vietnamese, raised in Vietnam and schooled in America. On top of that, imagine being friends and aids to the American CIA and moving to America after the fall of Saigon in a war where you were a secretly a sympathizer to the American “enemy.”

“I was ever always divided, although it was only partially my fault. While I chose to live two lives and be a man of two minds, it was hard not to, given how people always called me a bastard.”

The back plot serves as kind of a confession, to things on all sides of the coin for the main character. Throughout the story you get a sense of how he both betrayed all of his identities and how he showed his loyalty to them as well.

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