Caroline Vu

I requested an advance review copy of this book because I’d read and enjoyed Vu’s first novel, Palawan Story. Although I saw that the author’s writing had certainly matured since her earlier effort, the content of this new work of fiction did not engage me in the least. I was not interested in reading about a schoolteacher-father preying on his 16-year-old student (which reads like pornography), and I was even less taken with the story of the teenage protagonist’s sexual liaison with a stinking, eagle-tattooed American soldier in 1970s Saigon. The author was a great deal more interested in providing a play-by-play of these characters’ antics than I was in reading about them. Unwilling to invest more time in this slow-moving, sex-focused story with its dull, superficial characters, I abandoned the book with relief at page 61. I had already settled into irreversible resentment after having read only a portion, and Vu had provided me with no reasons to plod through a few hundred pages more. A disappointment.… (plus d'informations)