Eric Nguyen (3)Critiques

While story line was a good idea the adaption was not. Very choppy and superficial½

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

Huong gradually comes to the realization that she would never see her spouse again. Her kids, Tuan and Binh, grow up in the absence of their absent father, plagued by a man and a nation locked in their memories and imaginations, as she struggles to come to terms with this loss. As they proceed, the three adjust to life in America in various ways: Tuan joins a neighborhood Vietnamese gang in an effort to feel more connected to his heritage; Huong falls in love with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new to the area; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted country and his developing gay sexuality. Before a disaster strikes the city they now call home and threatens to split them apart, their search for identification as individuals and as a family until a calamity strikes the city they now call home and forces them to immediately find a new way to join together and cherish the connections that bind, which threatens to rip them apart.

With this magnificent novel I have once again found one of my certain to be top ten reads of the new year. This book swept me away with the fascinating story of an immigrant mother and her two boys. Ben, in particular, impressed me as the center of the story - he changes, learning to swim (at about the center of the narrative), learning to accept his gay persona, and deciding to go to Paris and become a writer.

Demonstrating a marvelous prose style and an ability to link together the characters' lives with details that held my interest, this first novel was wonderful and moving all the way to the last page. I immediately wanted to read it again and that is always the sign of a great read.

I have read many immigrant stories this year, in which people emigrate from many places! However, it's sad that the destination is almost always America. Not to place that blame on this book specifically, after I have read so many. Anyway, this is a family from Vietnam who moves to New Orleans. Huong is a pregnant woman with a small child, and she expects her husband to join her, but as the boat drifts away, she sees him standing on the shore. The book follows a young mother raising two sons in one of America's uniquest places. The perspective shifts from the mother to each son. But there are so many great immigrant books (A GREAT thing), it's hard to see what makes this one stand out, especially when the jump to the ending seemed a bit of a stretch to end the book with a quick dose of maximum conflict. But the book is still worth reading.½

Riveting

This was the most beautifully written book I have read in a long time. This family's developmental arc in the face of so much disruption, so much pain. . . .

This is a well-written novel, evocative of places and times.

Eric Nguyen's debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water , is a beautifully written look at an immigrant Vietnamese family, and how their lives are shaped or reshaped by America.

Huong and her two young sons leave Vietnam in 1979 and move to New Orleans. Huong’s husband, Cong, stays in Vietnam, although she looks forward to the day they will be reunited. The book moves forward as snapshots in time, from 1979 to 2005, narrated by Huong and her sons. Huong becomes more acclimated to life in America and becomes involved with a Vietnamese car salesman

Although the structure of the novel took some getting used to, ultimately I couldn't put it down. Beautiful and heartbreaking its hard to believe this is a debut novel! I'm excited to see what else Eric Nguyen has to offer us in the future.

Thanks to netgalley and publishers for providing and e-copy for me to read and leave my honest thoughts. This book was such a joy and I'm glad I got to experience it early, though the wait will definitely be worth it for everyone else. I highly recommend you pick this up as soon as it hits shelves!

The first steps into the water change everything. Mother and child become refugees while Father realizes he cannot leave his home, Vietnam. Thus begins a poignant tale of immigration. Physical privation, alienation, and emotional chaos ensue. It is difficult to rate this novel. At the beginning, I was completely in awe of the prose, the way it so fully conveyed the initial experience of being dropped into a foreign culture with next to no comprehension of the behavior and language of this new world. The use of language was absolutely lovely. The story of the family, its survival, its generational conflicts, its lies told to survive, its fears, loves, and loyalties, and its full circle experience unfolds well. The problem of this novel, for me, was that it seemed to try to accomplish too much for one story. Perhaps that is the message, however. Perhaps all that is part of being a refugee is just too much for anyone to experience and comprehend.

This novel starts off great--a young couple and their son decide to flee Vietnam in 1978. The husband, a teacher, has already spent one stint in a reeducation camp. He makes the arrangements, and they flee through the jungle to a bay. Somehow, he is left behind.

Huong and young Tuon survive the boat and are relocated to New Orleans, where she has her second son. She is alone, with two young boys, in a city she doesn't know and very limited English. She makes her way, always missing and writing to Cong, working many hours, and trying to raise her boys. Both struggle with their own demons--not knowing their father, not knowing Vietnam, not fitting in in public school. They make mistakes, make friends, and learn about themselves.

I enjoyed all of this. But the last few chapters go off the rails, and even the storytelling felt different. Much more rushed, and it did not fit with the rest of the book's style. And while we find out what happened to Cong, we don't really find out what happens to the main characters.

This is a debut novel by a fairly young author, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

I also wonder what a bayou smells like, because it came up several times.

I wasn't particularly moved by this Vietnamese refugees in New Orleans story - it hits all the obligatory marks, the over worked mother with her somewhat misguided rigidity, the son who can't adjust to his American reality, the gay son. It's all there, but as if the author flinched at driving the knife into his guts and left us with a surface wound.

Spanning 27 years, this is the heartbreaking story of how a Vietnamese mother and her two sons survived in America. When Huong got on the boat to escape Vietnam, she thought her husband would come with her, their young son, and an unborn baby, but he did not. His decision to stay in Vietnam, impacted her and the boys long after. At first, she would send cassettes to her husband encouraging her sons to participate, but then a curt postcard arrived telling her not to contact him again. She tells the boys their father is dead. Living in the poverty of New Orleans is not easy. The older son turns to a Vietnamese gang and the younger boy decides to become completely American. The theme of the book is about moving on as much as it is about survival. Ben ends up in Paris taking a break before beginning his doctoral program. Tuan sees that a Vietnamese gang is not the life he has envision. As the story began in water, so does it end, escaping the water of Hurricane Katrina. Told from the perspectives of the three main characters, it’s a story of struggle and yet even as they survive the hurricane, there’s hope as they realize how much New Orleans has become a part of them.

Resilience edited by Eric Nguyen is a collection of essays, poems, stories, and advice for young gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender teens and young adults, but there are lessons in these stories for everyone, including those that bully, talk down to, or otherwise belittle people. The world would be a much better place if we were secure in ourselves and didn’t give others’ hate speech the credence that we do or given them the power over our own lives, but those of us who need support, deserve a system of people and community willing to stand up for others.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/02/resilience-edited-by-eric-nguyen.html½