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peggymay'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
Graphic: Addiction, Grief, Physical abuse, Violence, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Death, Mental illness, Cancer, Abortion, Xenophobia, Bullying, Drug use, War, Child abuse, Homophobia, Domestic abuse, Animal cruelty, Racism, Animal death, Emotional abuse, and Death of parent
Moderate: Drug abuse, Racism, Death, Drug use, Child abuse, Homophobia, War, Domestic abuse, and Addiction
Minor: Domestic abuse, Abortion, Car accident, Bullying, Racism, Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Transphobia, Animal cruelty, Vomit, Animal death, Terminal illness, Alcoholism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Drug use, Grief, Racial slurs, Homophobia, War, Cancer, Excrement, Addiction, Child abuse, and Blood
zuriisawesome's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Addiction, Blood, Drug use, Domestic abuse, Abortion, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War, and Xenophobia
pseudolain's review against another edition
- 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? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Colonisation, Death, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Abortion, Cancer, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, and War
Moderate: Terminal illness, Bullying, Alcohol, Blood, Chronic illness, Sexual content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Physical abuse, Miscarriage, Hate crime, and Misogyny
naiu_cs's review
- 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
4.25
Graphic: Toxic relationship
Moderate: War, Violence, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Racism, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Animal cruelty
Minor: Abortion, Death, Cancer, Child abuse, Bullying, Homophobia, Child death, and Blood
ellornaslibrary's review against another edition
- 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? Yes
5.0
And when I've had time to process this raw, emotional, beautiful read a little more I'll add to this review.
Graphic: Addiction, Sexual content, Alcoholism, Violence, Grief, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Abortion, Alcohol, Homophobia, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Drug abuse, War, Physical abuse, Dementia, Death, Animal death, and Blood
Moderate: Racism, Fire/Fire injury, Racial slurs, Bullying, Gun violence, and Injury/Injury detail
mepresley'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
Little Dog narrates the war in Vietnam that shaped his family, that he once thought birthed them, before he realized that they were born of beauty.
He shows us his childhood, filled with a mother who was overworked and whose job at the nail salon taught her to say sorry as part of her identity, part of her livelihood, lessons Little Dog carried into his own first job, working underage among illegal immigrants harvesting tobacco, and paid under the table. A childhood colored by his schizophrenic Lan, as with the night that he awoke to fireworks that she thought were an air raid, and the two of them crouched together, hiding from the enemy, but also as with the day that she spotted purple flowers across a fence separating the path from the highway, sending Little Dog over to gather them, helping him back across, creating a windowsill garden & a secret that bonded them, Lan's finger to her lips as she told Rose they found the flowers discarded by a florist, the night he came home after having penetrative sex with Trevor for the first time, wet from the river they bathed in, and Lan told him that he had been on a long journey but they wouldn't speak of it so that the pirates couldn't find him.
A childhood shaped around his mother's pain, her abuse of Little Dog, but also the two of them walking the mall with squares of chocolate that felt decadent, filling a cart at Goodwill on yellow tag day when everything was an additional 50% off, reaching across a divide to touch each other and share truths even when they cut--in the bakery, when Little Dog comes out to his mother and she tells him that he had a brother, aborted before he was born, because they could not afford to feed him.
A young adulthood of choosing his own pain, in the form of Trevor, who could not accept his own homosexuality, and who was himself broken by an abusive father, a culture who taught him to hate himself and deny his own existence as a gay man, an addiction to Oxycontin turned heroin, stemming from an ankle injury when he was just 14 years old, dying of an overdose at 22.
The narrative ends with Trevor's death and its aftermath interspersed with Lan's death and its aftermath, with Little Dog's goodbye to his first doomed love echoed by Paul's graveside goodbye via video chat to his own doomed first love, the former sundered by preventable addiction and the latter by war & the machinations of his family.
Throughout the text, Little Dog returns again and again in powerful ways to a few animal images: the monarch butterflies and their yearly migration; macaque monkeys, whose heads were broken open while they were still alive so their brains could be ingested as a cure for impotence; baby calves kept in close cages for their entire short lives so that their meat would be more tender and delicious; and buffalo, an entire herd, stampeding over a cliff, one after the other. Seeing the image on TV, Rose asks Little Dog why the buffalo do that, watching those before them fall to their deaths and doing the same thing, a question that Little Dog, in turn, poses to Trevor, who tells him that it's not a choice they make, just nature. Vuong chooses to leave us with only this answer, which is also the answer of why people repeat the same patterns, intergenerational trauma in action, friends dying by the handfuls of ODs. Googling the question after finishing the book, I find that the true answer is just as perfect for the novel: buffalo stampede when threatened and Native Americans harnessed this knowledge to kill the buffalo in droves. Like the Vietnamese immigrants in this story, like the forgotten poor of the neighborhood where Little Dog grew up--and so many identical neighborhoods (places where people don't ask "how are you?" because the responses are already known and overflowing with loss and pain and unmet needs, but instead "what's good?" because good, however small it is, can be good enough, because freedom is always relative, and calves are the most free in the short moments between their cage being opened & being led to the slaughter), like queer people, the buffalo run off the cliff because they are hunted.
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, War, Animal death, Addiction, Blood, Cancer, Child abuse, Colonisation, Homophobia, and Mental illness
notartgarfunkel'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
3.75
Graphic: Racism, Abortion, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Homophobia, Sexual content, War, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Body horror, Cursing, Alcoholism, Colonisation, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Pregnancy, Bullying, Cancer, Excrement, Vomit, Gore, Grief, Murder, and Panic attacks/disorders
Minor: Fatphobia, Deportation, Pedophilia, and Transphobia
gabriella_'s review against another edition
- 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? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Racial slurs, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Homophobia, Drug abuse, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Misogyny, Medical content, Drug use, Addiction, Bullying, War, Violence, Sexual content, Grief, Abortion, Xenophobia, Racism, Terminal illness, Sexism, Pregnancy, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Dementia, Death, Cursing, and Classism
jelliestars's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
Graphic: Drug use, Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, and Sexual content
Moderate: Alcohol, Bullying, Cancer, Grief, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, War, Child abuse, Violence, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Xenophobia, Abortion, Mental illness, and Blood
Minor: Transphobia, Car accident, Child death, Alcoholism, and Gun violence
mmwiseheart's review against another edition
- 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
3.5
Graphic: Sexual content and Violence
Moderate: Homophobia, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, War, Addiction, Animal death, Cancer, Classism, Child abuse, Grief, Physical abuse, and Racism
Minor: Abandonment, Blood, Alcoholism, Car accident, Excrement, Hate crime, Confinement, and Death of parent