Reviews with content warning for Violence - Dust Child

A thoughtful, nuanced, and empathetic account of the Vietnam war through the intertwining storylines of a Vietnamese prostitute, an American veteran, and an Amerasian “dust child”. This stirring tale explores the fallout — the broken families, the mutual resentments, the haunting secrets — and calls forth tremendous amounts of forgiveness from every side. Quê Mai Nguyễn reminds us that we may not be able to heal every wound when the dust settles, but peace can still be found when we move forward.

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cyborgforty's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The last chapters stunned me. I did not expect the book to end the way it did at all. I thought the book was leading up to a brutally honest closure—I thought that would have been well done, and well reflective of real experiences and real trauma. But

the last chapter was as close to a fairy-tale ending as I could ever imagine coming out of a war.

The pacing, the journey through time, the gradual revelation of everything known (and acceptance of what remains unknown) is incredible. So much of the story revolves around the lies that characters tell each other, the truths they hide from each other, which despite each character's growth is clear until the very end. I was shocked at how differently I could perceive the same character, through different perspectives or at different points in time. Quynh and Dan especially.

Although I didn't find the prose to be the strongest part of the novel, I was taken by several lines immersed by how the text flowed between languages. The dialogue is mostly in English, but I found myself translating in my head what I think the character would have said in Vietnamese, or imagining how the character would have pronounced English words with their accent (Nguyen has a clever way of conveying this). I didn't learn many Vietnamese proverbs from my family and having them come up so often within the text was very enlightening for me, expressing sentiments that felt very familiar even if I'd never heard the words themselves.

Several times while reading this book, I thought, "oh, that's why [insert some Vietnamese linguistic/customary thing that I grew up with but never knew the reason why]." The depth Nguyen offers as a Vietnamese writer was particularly eye-opening for me, being American-born. I haven't read a lot of books set in Vietnam, or written by Vietnamese authors, much less a book that centers Vietnamese/American history in such a way.

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astridhawk's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad 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

A very haunting book, which was less about Vietnamese culture than I expected, and more about the victims of war beyond those killed, and the atrocities that persist well beyond wartime.

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internationalreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was.. fine? It felt like a book written to teach Americans about the Vietnam war rather than to tell a story set in that time. Disappointing after loving The Mountains Sing so much.

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mondovertigo's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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annie26's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.5

Nguyen Phan Que Mai can be relied on to weave a complex, emotional and powerful story. And she’s done it again with this book.
It explores interconnected issues and dynamics so well all the while giving you an important piece of Vietnamese history. I think Trang and Phong were my favourite characters but I appreciated the other characters in this story as well.
The plight of Amerasians in Vietnam is a topic that I’ve only heard discussed a few times. What a perspective.
This is a heartbreaking but very hopeful story. 4.5 stars from me. Thank you to Oneworld for my proof copy.

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raineachreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-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

4.5

‘Dust Child’ is a novel that examines the trauma of the Vietnam War both in the immediate but also in the long lasting ripple effects of those directly involved as well as their families and wider communities. Divided into three main story lines of a young girl who finds herself working in a bar during the war where she falls in love with an American soldier, a boy growing up as an orphan who is outcast due to having an American father and Vietnamese mother and a veteran returning to the country decades after fighting there. While the subject matter is heavy and doesn’t shy away from the realities of trauma and the different ways this is experienced and lived out, the book remains highly readable and engaging.

Without giving away spoilers I loved how the author led the reader to believe they had worked out the conclusion only to weave the strands together to reveal something different. While trauma is without a doubt the main theme (the author has an academic background in this subject connected to the Vietnam War so does this extremely sensitivity and authentically)there are many sub- themes going on too. I don’t think you can end this book without thinking about morality, the importance of family and the messy realities of truth. While lies may be told or facts left out to try not to cause someone harm, in the long term this can have more far reaching painful consequences. What this book also did really well was to combine languages together, bringing another dimension again to the story.

This is a book that will stay with me and continue to make me think in the days to come.

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