Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - The Committed

the continuation from the sympathizer was seamless. i love this book but not as much as i love the first. at times so much happens and youre left thinking "wait, what the fuck??" for a while, until you reread the part and finally absorb the events. the book waits for no one. honestly it's all just one big mind fuck. the ending left me SO CONFUSED.

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leah_alexandra's review

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adventurous dark funny reflective tense fast-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

This is a really good follow-up to The Sympathizer. The stakes felt a little lower due to the change of settings (drug dealing scheme vs. war), but the book has the same compelling urge and forward momentum. Viet Thanh Nguyen is just such a strong and effective writer. I'm so glad I picked up both this and The Sympathizer, as they're not the types of books I generally read. You must know going in, however, that this book is violent and graphic. Content warnings abound.

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hannia222's review

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challenging dark funny reflective tense medium-paced

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

“Seeing the failures of both communism and anticommunism, I chose nothing, a synthesis that neither capitalists nor communists could understand. You may think that I'm being a nihilist, but you could not be more wrong. While nihilists thought life was meaningless and rejected all religious and moral principles, I still believed in the principle of revolution. I also believed that nothing was full of meaning - in short, that nothing was actually something. Wasn't that a kind of revolution in itself?”

* mild spoilers for The Sympathizer *

A satirical, challenging sequel to The Sympathizer, The Committed follows "Vo Danh" - which really means anonymous - also known as Camus or Crazy Bastard, as he enters France, his father's homeland, as a refugee after reeducation. Quickly thrown into danger and crime, we watch his two minds split even further, his love for his blood brother become even deeper, and his belief in nothing even stronger.

After struggling with the stream of consciousness and dense writing in the first book, this one felt like a light at the end of the tunnel. It was so much easier to sink into the author's style. I ended up enjoying The Committed much more for this reason - I could look past the "harder" writing and immerse myself in the challenging ideas and internal conflict presented. For the same reason, I started caring about the characters much more: their lives mattered to me, and even though they are certainly antiheroes, I wanted them to succeed.

The overwhelming theme of this book, as the title suggests, is commitment to a cause. Viet Thanh Nguyen excellently explores what it means to commit to an ideology (communism, capitalism, colonialism) and why we, as people, feel the need to have follow a specific one. Although a few ideas are thrown into your face vulgarly, their intensity illuminated their truth and really made this novel one to think about; one that will stay with you. I enjoyed the exploration of privilege, misogyny, racism and nationalism, especially since the way they are integrated into the dialogue and internal monologue was so well done. It never felt forced, yet always intrigued me.

There are a few great twists, giving the novel a thriller edge to its literary concepts. I also found myself annotating quite a few bits that made me laugh out loud, whether for its truth or its genuine humour. It could definitely be argued that some of the newly introduced characters were slightly flat, or stereotypical, but I found them fun to read about anyway. The way that the ideas from The Sympathizer are carried through and expanded on, while introducing new ones, was definitely a bonus too.

Overall, I would definitely recommend the duology: although it leaves you with a few question, it's refreshing, strange and one to remember. (If you're a fan of A Clockwork Orange or 1984 specifically!)

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feifeii's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.75

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caidyn's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-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

3.5

Just like the first book, this is a hard one to rate and review. All I know is that I didn't like it as much as the first book and it was ten times more confusing that that first book. It was good, but I'd need to sit down and really concentrate hard to get all the nuances in the book. And I'd need to read it soon after rereading the first book. So, good but not great.

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cherreadssharereads's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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

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