Reviews

The Boat by Nam Le

Only show reviews with written explanations

Omg so I just finished watching the adaptation of this on the web, which is called the boat sbs and it’s completely free to watch, listen and read along. The animation and the sound was breathtaking! The story itself is beautiful but pretty surface level stuff which is good for younger audiences but for me it was not anything out of this world. Although I didn’t enjoy the writing as much, the animation and sound is what made it a more enjoyable experience. Wish that the author delved a little deeper into this time in history but it was still a quick and enjoyable experience. I would recommend this if you are interesting in watching a quick story about the hard journey that Vietnamese refugees had to take to escape war.

biolexicon's review

Go to review page

5.0

The first story, Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, was fantastic. The rest pale in comparison. I'm keeping this book on the strength of that story alone.

daisy_kxnt's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

*3.5 stars

sunrays118's review

Go to review page

3.0

An uneven collection of short stories written well but told a slow, often languid way. The stories drift between long stretches of descriptions and short bouts of action. I would call these more vignettes. None of the stories have a true plot or go anywhere, instead they all seem more atmospheric, giving off a vague impression of a character and, more over, a place before ending a bit randomly.

They writing is fine but it is not quite fleshed out enough. The pacing seems off. The order of the stories doesn't flow. The characters all seem a bit underdeveloped.

I think this book had promise but was a bit too lofty - it never quite took hold of something real.

In truth, I would have given this collection two stars but the final story, the title piece, was so much more polished than anything else that I did round up.

One extra note, the last story in this collection was made into an interactive web comic that is absolutely wonderful. By itself, that comic should be rated five stars - it is superb.

kim_berleyzheng's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

3.0

ktk8's review

Go to review page

hopeful inspiring sad

5.0

Just great!

sleepingnerd's review

Go to review page

4.0

I read the online interactive graphic novel, not the whole book, but I wanna talk about this anyway. First, the art itself. It's so so beautifully executed: the sounds, the ink/watercolor drawings, the constant swaying. It all came together to form a beautifully atmospheric story, in which I truly felt like I was there, along with the characters. So, yeah, I love everything about the art of this.

The story itself is vague in a dreamlike way. Throughout my reading I just had this persistent feeling of dread, like a stone weighing inside you, slowly sinking you down. However, sometimes it was a bit too vague for me, and I can't say I fully understand everything that happened. Even so, being thrown in this horrible situation, and feeling everything alongside those characters, getting to know a bit more about something that really happened to real people, it was truly worthwhile.

Honestly, it's such an amazing experince, and so short (and available online!) that I really recommend everyone give this a look.

catymart83's review

Go to review page

4.0

I really liked this book; several of the stories were profoundly affecting. While I don't neccessarily subscribe to the hype that this collection of short stories have been getting, I nonetheless understand why so many people love this book. My favorite stories were "Meeting Elise," the story of a father trying to meet up with his daughter who he hasn't seen in more than a decade. The language in this story was graceful and haunting and I suggest reading this collection just for this one alone. My two other favorites were "Halfhead Bay" and the title story "The Boat" about a teenaged boy and the consequences of falling for a girl already attached and a dangerous journey of a 16 year old girl from Vietnam to an unknown land by a dangerously overcrowded boat after the Vietnam War ended, respectively. Nam Le's stories are never about the literal meaning of its words; they're about the underlying meaning and feelings of it characters and character's actions. This is readily apparent in "Halfhead Bay" which while seemily about a boy and his crush on a girl, is actually about a father's expectations of his son and the slow erosion of a family when a parent is dying from a protracted illness. While I truly loved a lot of the stories I believe that one story ("Hiroshima") should have been excised from the final collection. That story was just filler; it just did not rise to the caliber of the other stories included in "The Boat." "Hiroshima" was full of useless details with no plot to speak of; it just distracted from the rest of these amazing stories.