A review by dhnewman
After Disasters by Viet Dinh

3.0

There's overlapping stories at work here that Dinh manages to pull together. The epilogue took a lot of the punch away for me, but before that there's a couple of chapters that are absolutely superb captures of grief and shock. One includes a litany of questions that is dizzying in its continual stream of emotional wallops. But getting there is a little uneven and disjointed. Rather than allowing each character the range and development they deserve, there is some lack of depth that doesn't quite work to build interest and rather frustrates. Taken as a series of individual stories, these would be lovely and make the moments of occlusion work. As a cohesive story, it takes itself a bit too seriously and doesn't build up quite the way it should.