Reviews with content warning for Violence - Dust Child

This is a very hard and emotional read, especially for Viet Kieu. It depicts all the horrible sides of war and the intersections between American and Vietnamese cultures. It’s really a sad book, but so beautiful and I think really captured the spirit of Vietnamese people so well.

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moniipeters's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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augie_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative 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

4.75

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thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-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? Yes

4.25

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maidinnah's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful 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? Yes

4.75

A thoughtful, nuanced, and empathetic account of the Vietnam war through the intertwining storylines of a Vietnamese prostitute, an American veteran, and an Amerasian “dust child”. This stirring tale explores the fallout — the broken families, the mutual resentments, the haunting secrets — and calls forth tremendous amounts of forgiveness from every side. Quê Mai Nguyễn reminds us that we may not be able to heal every wound when the dust settles, but peace can still be found when we move forward.

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cyborgforty's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The last chapters stunned me. I did not expect the book to end the way it did at all. I thought the book was leading up to a brutally honest closure—I thought that would have been well done, and well reflective of real experiences and real trauma. But

the last chapter was as close to a fairy-tale ending as I could ever imagine coming out of a war.

The pacing, the journey through time, the gradual revelation of everything known (and acceptance of what remains unknown) is incredible. So much of the story revolves around the lies that characters tell each other, the truths they hide from each other, which despite each character's growth is clear until the very end. I was shocked at how differently I could perceive the same character, through different perspectives or at different points in time. Quynh and Dan especially.

Although I didn't find the prose to be the strongest part of the novel, I was taken by several lines immersed by how the text flowed between languages. The dialogue is mostly in English, but I found myself translating in my head what I think the character would have said in Vietnamese, or imagining how the character would have pronounced English words with their accent (Nguyen has a clever way of conveying this). I didn't learn many Vietnamese proverbs from my family and having them come up so often within the text was very enlightening for me, expressing sentiments that felt very familiar even if I'd never heard the words themselves.

Several times while reading this book, I thought, "oh, that's why [insert some Vietnamese linguistic/customary thing that I grew up with but never knew the reason why]." The depth Nguyen offers as a Vietnamese writer was particularly eye-opening for me, being American-born. I haven't read a lot of books set in Vietnam, or written by Vietnamese authors, much less a book that centers Vietnamese/American history in such a way.

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astridhawk's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-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

3.5

A very haunting book, which was less about Vietnamese culture than I expected, and more about the victims of war beyond those killed, and the atrocities that persist well beyond wartime.

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