Reviews

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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hii_ara's review against another edition

chapter 5….that poor squid. completely unnecessary in my honest opinion and i dont care enough about the story so far to keep on reading, which says a lot bc I’m 1/4 the way in

amandas_bookshelf's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad 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

4.0

Content Warnings

crystaltran's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark 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

it was really refreshing reading a book like this. i don’t normally read a lot of historical fiction, but this was so intellectually gripping, even in the toughest parts to read i still found myself coming back. i feel like most things i have read regarding the Vietnam War, whether fiction or non-fiction, have been very pro-America, and painting the war efforts to be very black and white. it was refreshing to see something with a more nuanced take that takes off the rose-colored glasses and shows that it’s a more complicated issue than communism bad, America good. there’s criticisms and sympathies on both ends and regardless of where you stand politically, it’s intriguing to see those perspectives detailed in such a way.

the book is very detailed and goes on about irrelevant details for longer than it really needs to, but the way that the author describes things is so appealing to me. i enjoyed the writing style and thought it contributed well to the overall tone of the story.

the format definitely took some getting used to though. there’s no quotation marks or anything to denote when a character is speaking, and also generally not a lot of paragraph breaks, so i’d often have to read a section multiple times to understand when someone is talking and who is talking. it also just was a slow read in general because of the way it was formatted. but for something as unforgivingly descriptive as this, i definitely would recommend taking your time consuming the literature.