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A review by mikaylahartk
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
5.0
Witty, dark, stylish - A nameless Communist spy flees Vietnam at the Fall of Saigon and continues his covert operations as a refugee in America, all the while scheming a return to his homeland. Nguyen mixes the the dread and the tension of a flashy, fictional spy novel with the wry irony of a memoir as the narrator criticizes, revels in, and eventually flees America back to his battered but begrudgingly beloved homeland.
I'm finding it hard to categorize this book on my bookshelf. Though it is undoubtedly fiction, it reads like a memoir, a fact not lost on the narrator, who refers to his "confessional" multiple times. Some chapters could stand on their own as essays examining American culture (namely, its unrelenting optimism and affluence coupled with undercurrents of racism, corruption, and vice) from the point of view of a disillusioned refugee. Our narrator is at once subject to the mercy of his American sponsors from his daily sustenance to, as he discovers after consulting on a Hollywood movie, how the rest of the public perceives and stereotypes him and his country. I have never found such an honest, well-tempered treatise on the Asian immigrant and even the Asian-American experience, and the narrator's long stint in America was personally validating in many ways I did not anticipate. Even the passages regarding Vietnamese history and culture, an area I know very little about, were educational without the stodginess or heavy-handedness of a classroom. I grew to appreciate his culture as his perspectives validated my own.
That said, this book is not for the faint of heart. One particular passage towards the end troubled me enough to put the book aside entirely for a few days. Unlike most fiction, which use disturbing images and gaudy sex like glitter to a child's artwork, I found Nguyen's deployment of these sensational moments sobering - a surprising reaction since I'm steeped in American Hollywood, which sensationalizes large explosions like it isn't often oppression and subjugation at work. After reading The Sympathizer, it is hard to view a Hollywood Shoot 'Em Up the same way.
In sum, this book fulfills pretty much every hope I have for a fiction book when I take it off the shelf: an experience that offers a brief escape from reality but returns you with more insights and perspective than when you left. Highly recommend.
I'm finding it hard to categorize this book on my bookshelf. Though it is undoubtedly fiction, it reads like a memoir, a fact not lost on the narrator, who refers to his "confessional" multiple times. Some chapters could stand on their own as essays examining American culture (namely, its unrelenting optimism and affluence coupled with undercurrents of racism, corruption, and vice) from the point of view of a disillusioned refugee. Our narrator is at once subject to the mercy of his American sponsors from his daily sustenance to, as he discovers after consulting on a Hollywood movie, how the rest of the public perceives and stereotypes him and his country. I have never found such an honest, well-tempered treatise on the Asian immigrant and even the Asian-American experience, and the narrator's long stint in America was personally validating in many ways I did not anticipate. Even the passages regarding Vietnamese history and culture, an area I know very little about, were educational without the stodginess or heavy-handedness of a classroom. I grew to appreciate his culture as his perspectives validated my own.
That said, this book is not for the faint of heart. One particular passage towards the end troubled me enough to put the book aside entirely for a few days. Unlike most fiction, which use disturbing images and gaudy sex like glitter to a child's artwork, I found Nguyen's deployment of these sensational moments sobering - a surprising reaction since I'm steeped in American Hollywood, which sensationalizes large explosions like it isn't often oppression and subjugation at work. After reading The Sympathizer, it is hard to view a Hollywood Shoot 'Em Up the same way.
In sum, this book fulfills pretty much every hope I have for a fiction book when I take it off the shelf: an experience that offers a brief escape from reality but returns you with more insights and perspective than when you left. Highly recommend.