lisagray68's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. I thought the author did a great job of blending the mainstream American experience with the experience of Vietnamese and Asian immigrant families, along with all the issues that encompasses. So many times I laughed at just clever references to American life that I would probably never notice having been raised here. I loved the story, the characters, the whole deal. I'm surprised this book is not getting higher ratings.
mashedpotaylorz's review against another edition
4.0
I found myself connecting strongly with both Van and Linny. Cute story overall, satisfying ending, and very well-received by this short girl :) I gave it 4 stars rather than 5 only because it didn't shake my world. I wish I could give it 4.5!
egmamaril's review
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
amandalorianxo's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I’m bumping this to a 3.5/3.75 ~
There are a lot of novels that have been published 10+ years ago and I was either too young or unaware that they existed. Short Girls is one of those novels that caught my eye because well… I’m petite and a woman lol. We follow the lives of Van and Linny Luong, first generation American sisters whose mom & dad immigrated from Vietnam in 1975 all the way to California then settled into a small Michigan mid sized city.
We are given glimpses of their lives (during their younger years and adult.) The story is set roughly two-four years ish after 2001 but the way in which Nguyen portrayed her characters didn’t feel outdated. I wasn’t fully aware of the supposed submissive tendencies that are stereotypes into certain Asian personas but I somewhat got a feel of that in Van’s persona. I hated how Miles (her husband) treated her and I wished she had been more assertive / defend herself more when it came to his gaslighting and just general ick. Linny I could understand, wanted to escape to a city where she could escape the scrutiny of the neighbors aka Chicago. I also was on the fence about her behavior but tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.
I think the reason why I gave this 3.5/3.75 stars is because I wasn’t sure where the story was going in terms of plot. It’s definitely a slice of life type of story and we need more Asian writers and Asian rep but I just wanted a more concrete idea of what was going to happen. The dual POV’s were essential and I’m glad this wasn’t one sided.
There are a lot of novels that have been published 10+ years ago and I was either too young or unaware that they existed. Short Girls is one of those novels that caught my eye because well… I’m petite and a woman lol. We follow the lives of Van and Linny Luong, first generation American sisters whose mom & dad immigrated from Vietnam in 1975 all the way to California then settled into a small Michigan mid sized city.
We are given glimpses of their lives (during their younger years and adult.) The story is set roughly two-four years ish after 2001 but the way in which Nguyen portrayed her characters didn’t feel outdated. I wasn’t fully aware of the supposed submissive tendencies that are stereotypes into certain Asian personas but I somewhat got a feel of that in Van’s persona. I hated how Miles (her husband) treated her and I wished she had been more assertive / defend herself more when it came to his gaslighting and just general ick. Linny I could understand, wanted to escape to a city where she could escape the scrutiny of the neighbors aka Chicago. I also was on the fence about her behavior but tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.
I think the reason why I gave this 3.5/3.75 stars is because I wasn’t sure where the story was going in terms of plot. It’s definitely a slice of life type of story and we need more Asian writers and Asian rep but I just wanted a more concrete idea of what was going to happen. The dual POV’s were essential and I’m glad this wasn’t one sided.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity
Minor: Xenophobia, Racism, and Miscarriage
achadamaia's review against another edition
3.0
When I read the blurb on the back of this book, it sounded interesting. I like stories about immigrants. So, when I started reading it, I had high hopes.
The story started off well enough. I enjoyed the interplay between the parents and their daughters. But, somewhere about 50 pages in it got bogged down with Van's relationship with Myles. It got too much into the history of both girls and their relationships, so much so that it interfered with the story. Their problems were established pretty early on and it didn't seem necessary to keep dwelling on what happened two or three years earlier.
I decided to stick with it, which I rarely do beyond 50 pages. About 100 pages in the story improved. Instead of being about the failed romances, it became about the girls, their relationship with their father, and what it is like to be an immigrant (or daughters of immigrants).
I have to say that the father was my favorite character. He was not easy to figure out. He had that right blend of quirkiness that I like. I thought the author presented a good contrast between the father struggles and the mother's ability to adapt. I was intrigued by the husband and wife living separate lives and having two completely different experiences in their new home. This played well against the daughters who were born here and had different problems.
I would have liked the story to have been more about that conflict between the immigrant parents and their children and less about the romantic attachments.
I am glad that I stuck with it though. The second half of the story is enjoyable and has more continuity. I would probably split my star rating as 2 stars for the first 100 pages and then 4 stars for the rest of the story.
The story started off well enough. I enjoyed the interplay between the parents and their daughters. But, somewhere about 50 pages in it got bogged down with Van's relationship with Myles. It got too much into the history of both girls and their relationships, so much so that it interfered with the story. Their problems were established pretty early on and it didn't seem necessary to keep dwelling on what happened two or three years earlier.
I decided to stick with it, which I rarely do beyond 50 pages. About 100 pages in the story improved. Instead of being about the failed romances, it became about the girls, their relationship with their father, and what it is like to be an immigrant (or daughters of immigrants).
I have to say that the father was my favorite character. He was not easy to figure out. He had that right blend of quirkiness that I like. I thought the author presented a good contrast between the father struggles and the mother's ability to adapt. I was intrigued by the husband and wife living separate lives and having two completely different experiences in their new home. This played well against the daughters who were born here and had different problems.
I would have liked the story to have been more about that conflict between the immigrant parents and their children and less about the romantic attachments.
I am glad that I stuck with it though. The second half of the story is enjoyable and has more continuity. I would probably split my star rating as 2 stars for the first 100 pages and then 4 stars for the rest of the story.
suvata's review against another edition
3.0
Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen #BookReview
My rating: 3 of 5 stars = I liked it
This is the story of Van and Linny Luong. Height is a metaphor for the limitations of their Vietnamese heritage. Van is an overachiever who becomes an immigration attorney and lives in Michigan. Linny resides in Chicago. The estranged sisters have one common thread ... their inventor fathers who makes items that benefit short people.
The book is humorous look so Vietnamese culture and family dynamics.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars = I liked it
This is the story of Van and Linny Luong. Height is a metaphor for the limitations of their Vietnamese heritage. Van is an overachiever who becomes an immigration attorney and lives in Michigan. Linny resides in Chicago. The estranged sisters have one common thread ... their inventor fathers who makes items that benefit short people.
The book is humorous look so Vietnamese culture and family dynamics.
just_me_gi's review against another edition
4.0
was good, about sisters and immigration and generation and yah, i love me this stuff!
septemberdark's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
serenaac's review against another edition
3.0
Bich Minh Nguyen's Short Girls is a story of Vietnamese, second-generation immigrants Linny and Van Luong and their family. Their father, a loner and inventor, holding them at arms length, and their familial history is obscured by stories and silence. The story is broken into alternating chapters about each young woman, though written in a point of view that is more like an observer with each woman's inner thoughts are revealed -- much of this complaints or observations about how different they are from one another.
"The Luongs had always done this, scratching at each other's words as much out of habit as anything. But this time when Thuy Luong had told her husband to go sleep in the basement "like a dog"he stayed there instead of slinking back upstairs." (Page 4 of ARC)
Van is an immigration lawyer with the "perfect" life, or at least that's how it seems to her sister, Linny. Linny, on the other hand, has a free life where she can act and do as she desires on a whim without responsibility -- at least that's how it seems to her sister. The tension between these sisters is vivid, but in many ways could have been better executed without the internal dialogue complaints about the other sister at every turn or before each memory surfaced to demonstrate their differences.
"She would have set the glass to shattering, sailed through someone else's house, used up all the space that humans never reached." (Page 53 of ARC)
Van's world has been falling apart slowly, and now she is set adrift without a compass and without a husband. She struggles to keep her drama to herself and to overcome the emptiness in her home and her life. Meanwhile, Linny has to come to grips with her errors and her drifting life to make her dreams come true, while at the same time support her sister and her father, who continues to struggle to find success.
"Linny put in long hours experimenting shadows and liners, trying to make her eyes look bigger, deeper-set, less Asian. She painted plum colors up to her eyebrows and applied three coats of mascara. She ran peroxide-soaked cotton balls through her hair to create caramel highlights." (Page 58 of ARC)
Nguyen's Short Girls is a look at racial discrimination, height discrimination, immigrants looking for their place in a society that welcomes and shuns them, and finding once self amid the melting pot and one's own family, while trying to accept your family's own faults and ideas about success and love.
"The Luongs had always done this, scratching at each other's words as much out of habit as anything. But this time when Thuy Luong had told her husband to go sleep in the basement "like a dog"he stayed there instead of slinking back upstairs." (Page 4 of ARC)
Van is an immigration lawyer with the "perfect" life, or at least that's how it seems to her sister, Linny. Linny, on the other hand, has a free life where she can act and do as she desires on a whim without responsibility -- at least that's how it seems to her sister. The tension between these sisters is vivid, but in many ways could have been better executed without the internal dialogue complaints about the other sister at every turn or before each memory surfaced to demonstrate their differences.
"She would have set the glass to shattering, sailed through someone else's house, used up all the space that humans never reached." (Page 53 of ARC)
Van's world has been falling apart slowly, and now she is set adrift without a compass and without a husband. She struggles to keep her drama to herself and to overcome the emptiness in her home and her life. Meanwhile, Linny has to come to grips with her errors and her drifting life to make her dreams come true, while at the same time support her sister and her father, who continues to struggle to find success.
"Linny put in long hours experimenting shadows and liners, trying to make her eyes look bigger, deeper-set, less Asian. She painted plum colors up to her eyebrows and applied three coats of mascara. She ran peroxide-soaked cotton balls through her hair to create caramel highlights." (Page 58 of ARC)
Nguyen's Short Girls is a look at racial discrimination, height discrimination, immigrants looking for their place in a society that welcomes and shuns them, and finding once self amid the melting pot and one's own family, while trying to accept your family's own faults and ideas about success and love.
omurphy's review against another edition
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes