Vietnam Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Dust Child

Catherine — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 07:59:03 +0000

The Vietnam War has been written about from many points of view in fiction, but for the most part my reading has focused on the years of the war, rife as they are with the atrocities perpetuated on the Vietnamese, both by their own people (ARVN soldiers in the South, Viet Cong in the North) […]

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The Mountains Sing

Catherine — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 04:16:27 +0000

If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth. Hương and her grandmother live alone in Hanoi until they are told to evacuate and move to a remote mountain village for their safety. It’s the 1970s and the midst of the Vietnam War. Hương’s parents […]

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What I’m Reading in March

Catherine — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 04:29:00 +0000

It’s no secret that my February reading was not great—mostly because I complained about it. But, let’s let that go and move on, shall we?! It’s March and there’s a crop of books coming out that I’m excited about (because I always get excited about new books!). Some of them you’ve probably heard about already, […]

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The Given World

Catherine — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 07:12:08 +0000

When Riley is thirteen her brother Mick is declared missing in Vietnam. This news kills what little desire she has to stay in their small town and by the time she is eighteen she is gone, making her way from Montana to San Francisco to see the ocean and to escape every facet of life […]

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Reeducation of Cherry Truong

Catherine — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:58:18 +0000

In Communist countries “reeducation” is a euphemism for prison camp, forced labor, deprivation, and sometimes, torture. In Aimee Phan’s new book The Reeducation of Cherry Truong there is none of these but the end result is similar: a stripping away of old beliefs and breakdown of long held truths. Cherry is the American-born daughter of […]

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Ru: A Novel

Catherine — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:35:05 +0000

The Communist takeover of Saigon forces Nguyễn An Tinh and her family to leave behind their luxurious life and escape to a refugee camp in Malaysia. From there the family immigrates to Canada and settles in Quebec. Kim Thúy’s novel is called Ru, meaning ‘lullaby’ in Vietnamese, which aptly describes the book’s style of storytelling […]

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The Headmaster’s Wager

Catherine — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 07:30:56 +0000

In 1930 Percival Chen’s father left him and his mother in mainland China to go to Vietnam and seek his fortune. He never returned and so, after his mother’s death, Percival left their province to go to school in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the Japanese invasion in 1941 meant that Hong Kong was no longer […]

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