I’m giving this one 3 stars . I cannot, in good conscience, give it less. Because if nothing else, it is exquisitely written.

That said:

Never mind that any male who ever reads this will have walked away having learned how to masturbate with a live squid, how to gang rape a women as a form of torture – and how to conduct countless other sorts of torture which said male readers probably never considered before reading this book.

I get that it was supposed to be disorienting to me – the educated, female, WESTERN reader. I get that it is a detailed fictional accounting for the Boat People and for an experience that we can never otherwise imagine (why would we want to?). I get that the narrator remains nameless because his story is really the story of all refugees.

But because I was expected to read from the outside perspective – I never managed to like this book the way I should – beautifully written as it is.

Would I recommend you read it? Maybe – if you want a detailed account of what exactly it’s like to masturbate with a live squid – or what it’s like to gang rape someone – or what it’s like to have your face burned off or what it’s like to be invisible.

Sound good? Give it a go. It's a bit difficult to read, but you might learn something.

Sound terrible? Just take my review and run far far away from here...
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The Short of It:

Thrilling, at times funny, but relentlessly fast-paced.

The Rest of It:

Many books have been written about the Vietnam war. We’ve all seen our share of movies too about the subject. The Sympathizer is different in that it’s narrated by a double agent. Building a life with refugees in Los Angeles, he also reports back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.

The story is told in jarring episodic bursts of storytelling. At one point, I had to go back to make sure my Kindle did not jump to another book because all of a sudden the characters are engaged in making a movie about the Vietnam experience. This was a very weird, surreal part of the novel. The portrayal of the events and how the the Vietnamese were represented was at once front and center, and also an afterthought.

The entire book is push/pull. Some events are highly detailed and graphic and then the author lures you back in through a comical interchange. It’s hard from me to describe the story because the frenetic energy of the storytelling keeps you moving forward even though you’re not sure what you just read! But, even though it seemed like work to keep things straight, I did enjoy the reading experience.

It should be mentioned that it’s won a ton of awards. Have you read it? There is a sequel out if you enjoyed this one.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter. ( )

This won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction as a debut novel. It is overlong, overwritten, and overdone in general. It's a real pity, too, because it has it had the potential to be a very moving book. The author is talented but, as a debut novel, he wanted to show off that talent; a good editor would have curbed his tendencies to do so. Way, way overwritten and self-indulgent. Also far too long at nearly 4 pages. Should have been cut by at least 30%, probably more. But for all that, an author to watch; I need to read others of his books. The author was born in Vietnam but raised in the US. The book tells the story of the anonymous narrator, a North Vietnamese/ Communist mole in the South Vietnamese army, who stays embedded in a South Vietnamese community in exile in the United States, eventually returning to Vietnam as part of a guerrilla raid against the communists. The book is supposed to be his confession, written to satisfy his captors. The narrator's identity is what the book is really about and Nguyen has a lot to say, a fair amount of it, worth reading. ( )

This is an extraordinary, remarkable novel, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. The protagonist is a man of two parts, near the end of, and for a short time after, the Vietnam War. The crafting of this book is superb, as is the writing and the richness of the characters. ( )

Very good book with flashes of brilliance. Lost me in the reeducation camp-absurdity of 1984 and Heller perhaps too prominent in my mind. ( )