A review by andipants
Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen

3.0

This book read like a cross between a standard memoir of a second-generation Vietnamese immigrant and something like [b:My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself|12677337|My Life as Laura How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself|Kelly Kathleen Ferguson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317308729s/12677337.jpg|17792885] or [b:The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie|8619825|The Wilder Life My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie|Wendy McClure|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1279830961s/8619825.jpg|13490463], except it was all fiction. The prose is excellent; the characters are mostly nuanced and well-drawn, and most of the scenes have the ring of truth. I just wish there had been more done to connect the two "halves" of the story: the narrator's pursuit of her literary mystery, and her grappling with her own family's dysfunction. The ending also leaves pretty much all the major story threads dangling — which is undoubtedly true to real life, but it does make for a somewhat unsatisfying read. Much of the book felt like a description of things that had happened or were happening, and the narrator's (very realistic) thoughts and feelings about those things, but not much more; no great conclusions were drawn, and if you asked me to identify a narrative arc, I'd have trouble doing it. It's very literary, and if that's the sort of thing you like, you'll probably like this, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.