pickAlternating betweenqq 1969 and 2016, author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai explores, family, love, country, and how the past can alter our present. The new novel The Women is getting a lot of attention right now due to its Vietnam setting, and this novel really takes you into the heart of the conflict and how it affected the Vietnamese specifically. Deeply emotional and heart wrenching.
I remember each summer that I lived on the commune that one of us would get a horrific infection from chigger bites. Nasty little buggers.
so-soWhat I loved: the history
What I liked: the story
What I hated: the writing which was choppy, written mostly in mono and disyllabic words and was totally lacking in style. I don‘t know why this bothered me so much because most people don‘t seem to have minded it. 🤷♀️
pickI closed my eyes and walked down an aisle at the library. A book called to me. I love occasionally finding books this way. This memoir is what I consider to be the real story of what the result was of the Vietnam War. Trussoni‘s father was a ‘tunnel rat‘, entering tunnels to find the enemy or POW‘s. Ultimately, this experience and his divorce broke him. Trussoni spends her childhood/teen years with him even after her mother & siblings move 🔽
“I shrug, the way you do when your words come out and they float there stupid on the breeze and you‘re not sure they mean anything to anybody else.”
pickVietnam was truly a helicopter war - this is an account of a highly decorated chopper pilot, Ron Alexander, and his experiences rescuing injured soldiers from the hostile battlefield in his Huey. I was not fond of the audiobook‘s narrator. It happens
#LitsyLove
#ReadAway2024
so-soNguyen‘s family left Vietnam for the US when she was an infant, but her mother stayed behind. Now, Beth and her mother are estranged. She works hard to get to know her (birth) mother in adulthood, but the effort is rather one sided. Recollections of standoffish conversations and memories but nothing really substantial here.
This didn‘t really work for me. The writing was nice but the book lacked a flow and cohesive thread.
"This is a public relations problem not a military one," pronounced McNamara.
