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Liked It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “Wow! This collection of short stories is powerful. It can take your breath away. Each story is from a different part of the world and provides insight into the people. Insight that transcends trite cultural characteristic but instead exposes the raw feelings associated with an event. The...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It0 of 1 members found this review helpful “This reads well. There is a great variety in the stories, with a range of voices, settings and characters. However I lost my copy and now I have no great urge to finish it. Now I think of it as a very talented writer's five finger exerciise - lacking in soul. If I finish it and reconsider, I'll...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Actually, I listened to the first story in the CD presentation, and thought it was excellent. Didn't have time to listen to more before returning it to the library.”
Lesley B wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Synopsis: Young former Melbourne corporate lawyer turns hundreds of other young, former Melbourne corporate lawyers green with envy by publishing a phenomenally successful collection of nuanced and beautiful short stories.
Tim W wrote this review Thursday, September 17 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
My Take: Sigh. I guess it is an inevitable part of getting older to be confronted with the increasingly spectacular public successes of people who were formerly anonymously moving in your peer group. Like Nam Le, I used to be a corporate lawyer in Melbourne. I used to work for a law firm in the Rialto. In fact the law firm that I worked for was on a higher floor than Nam Le’s. So why haven’t I published a subtle, perceptive and critically acclaimed collection of short stories? Why aren’t I uniquely talented and motivated?? Sigh.
Anyway, my own petty jealousies aside, Nam Le is the real deal. While superficially, there are no obvious common threads between the short-stories in “The Boat”, at their core, each of the stories shares some extremely perceptive characterisation. Le is a subtle writer and explores the nuances of his characters impressively in such short stories. While I thought some of his stories were slightly over-long for what they were, in general this didn’t bother me as I appreciated Le’s obsessive attention to his characters. I’m really looking forward to seeing Le employ this talent in a full length novel.
While Le has honourably tried to cast off the limitations of ‘ethnic lit’ by setting his stories across the cultures of six continents, I enjoyed the two stories that he wrote from a Vietnamese-Australian perspective the best. This is no criticism of the other works in this collection, but the emotional intensity of the subjects closer to his own experience dramatically outshone that of his extra-cultural explorations.
A good example of this is the first story in the book “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” (Substantially extracted here). This opening missive tells the story of an aspiring Vietnamese-Australian writer at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop hosting a visit from his father while trying to finalise an important piece of assessment (some not to subtle parallels to Le’s own life here!). In a few short pages the story movingly explores concepts as complex and diverse as father-son relationships, the trauma of memory and the role of ethnicity in literature. It’s a masterpiece and obviously a topic that is close to home for Le.
Based on what I’ve seen in “The Boat”, I really I hope that Le doesn’t restrict himself from writing about his own cultural experiences. You get the feeling from reading “The Boat” that Le sees mining his own background as a bit of a literary cop out or the intellectual low road. Further, Le clearly shows in “The Boat” that he’s talented enough to write convincingly about characters in any cultural setting. But Le shows a real virtuosity when delving into the nuances of Vietnamese-Australian characters that it would be a tragedy to waste. Many great writers have mined the rich vein of their distinctive cultural backgrounds (Marquez, Mistry, Ha Jin, Achebe) not simply because it was the path of least resistance, but because it was a rich and interesting emotional resource. I hope that the natural instinct of an over-achiever to shine at the most difficult of tasks doesn’t distract Le from his talent for writing about topics closer to home in the future.”
“Fabulous book of Australian short stories by a new author”
Jenny U wrote this review Tuesday, September 8 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Amazing debut short story collection. Nam Le writes like a veteran, middle-aged writer at the top of his game. The best of the stories grip you from the opening paragraph. What's most impressive is the author's grasp of idiom: the stories are set in diverse places, from Iran to Vietnam, but clearly the author has a great ear for dialogue. To see the author's youthful photograph and read his stellar bio would be enough to make even many experienced writers give up the game in despair. A true wunderkind.
bibliotechno wrote this review Wednesday, July 1 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
”0 of 1 members found this review helpful“This reads well. There is a great variety in the stories, with a range of voices, settings and characters. However I lost my copy and now I have no great urge to finish it. Now I think of it as a very talented writer's five finger exerciise - lacking in soul. If I finish it and reconsider, I'll let you know.”
Patricia S wrote this review Thursday, April 30 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No1 of 1 members found this review helpful“Wow! This collection of short stories is powerful. It can take your breath away. Each story is from a different part of the world and provides insight into the people. Insight that transcends trite cultural characteristic but instead exposes the raw feelings associated with an event. The extraordinary talent of the author is quickly realized as you experience the deepness of emotion present in each story. If I had to recommend one book as an absolute read in the genre of ethnic fiction, it would be this. I look forward to reading more stories by this young author in the future. ”
Darla wrote this review Thursday, November 27 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“I just love this book of short stories. Nam Le is so incredibly versatile. Each short story is so different. I have to keep reminding myself that the same author wrote them all. I really love this book.”
Jeannie G wrote this review Wednesday, July 2 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“"Here is what I believe: We forgive any sacrifice by our parents, so long as it not made in our name." This collection of short stories by Vietnamese-born, Australian-raised Nam Le are extremely powerful and disturbing. The collection starts and ends with tales connected with Vietnam; however, and in my opinion uniquely, most of the Le's stories are quite global with settings as diverse as South America, Australia, Japan, the U.S. and Iran. My one critique is that some of the explicit sexual situations could have been left out to the benefit of this collection. My favorite story in the book was the beautiful, yet haunting "Hiroshima." ”
tapbirds wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Rec-Bookmarks”
SalDragski wrote this review Wednesday, June 18 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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