The Boat (Rough-Cut)
by Nam Le
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nam LeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: 030726808X
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Product features:
- The Boat (Rough-Cut)
Book Reviews of The Boat (Rough-Cut)
Book Review: The Boat
Summary: 5 Stars
Steve Koss wrote an insightful review here earlier suggesting a connection between this collection of seven short-stories and ethnic literature. Nam Le is Vietnamese, but only the first and last story are directly about the Vietnamese experience, the rest are a seemingly random mix of people and events from all over the world. Nam Le tells us he "could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, [he] choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans - and New York painters with hemorrhoids." What do Colombian assassins, Hiroshima orphans and hemorrhoid infected New Yorkers have to do with the Vietnamese experience?
Everything. The problem is, as Le says, ethnic literature is "a license to bore. The characters are always flat, generic." Readers are either numb to it because of stereotypes or mental blockage, or have no frame of reference. And as Le's first story shows, the writer can't help but be exploitative in the process. However it is still possible to convey the feelings of the experience through a proxy, and so all of these stories immerse the reader with emotions in preparation for the last story about Vietnamese boat people.
It's been said there is no loneliness more acute than that experienced around other people, in particular family. The New York artist who waits alone in the restaurant for the daughter who never comes; the high school football star who fights his personal battles, but even with his father taking the punches, still faces it alone; the Colombian assassin who faces his destiny without his friends help; in each of the stories the main character is isolated and alienated and faces a great trauma. The experience of reading this book reminded me of when I was child, lost in the crowd, my parents seemingly gone forever and the world a difficult and cold place.
By the last story, "The Boat", the readers sensibilities have been so finely shaped to this sense of alienation, fear and dread that Nam Le is able to convey the Vietnamese boat people "ethnic experience" in a fresh and immediate way. The details and facts are conveyed through the words on the page, but the feeling and sense of experience comes from within. Using this as an interpretive framework, it no longer seems like a collection of short stories but a work greater than its elements, a masterful use of the short story format to touch on universal human experience.
Summary of The Boat (Rough-Cut)
A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.In the magnificent opening story, ?Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,? a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father?s experiences in Vietnam?and what seems at first a satire of turning one?s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. ?Cartagena? provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In ?Meeting Elise,? an aging New York painter mourns his body?s decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman?s bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.
Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.
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