Ru

I admire the writing. It's filled with both beautiful and horrific images, sometimes stacked together. (E.g., description of grandmother in beautiful dress, at peaceful Buddhist altar; then, the suggestion that the incense blunts the pain that she feels about her departed son.)

On the other hand, I think the lack of structure put me off. I didn't feel attached to any characters because they come and go so quickly that they leave only impressions.

Kauniisti kirjoitettu omaelämäkerrallisia piirteitä sisältävä romaani vietnamilaisista venepakolaisista, jotka päätyivät Kanadaan. Aika omaperäinen tyyli, kirja on kirjoitettu lyhyinä, enimmäkseen yhdelle sivuilla mahtuvina lukuina, jotka poukkoilevat ajasta ja paikasta toiseen – välillä ollaan Kanadassa pakolaisina, välillä eletään hyväosaista elämää Vietnamissa ennen pakoa, välillä ollaan vierailemassa Vietnamissa myöhempinä aikoina.

Ei sillä lailla riipivä pakolaisuuskertomus kuin edellisenä lukemani Unohtamisen taito, tämä oli kaunista ja herkkää kiitollisuutta hyvää vastaanottoa kohtaan, eikä juurikaan vihaa ja vimmaa pakolaisuuden aiheuttajia kohtaan, ennemmin vain aika rauhallista kamaluuksien kuvailua matkan varrelta.

Elegantti kirja.

‰ЫПOur boat was completely destroyed by the waves created by an ordinary rain that fell immediately after we disembarked. More than two hundred of us watched in silence, eyes misty from rain and astonishment. The wooden planks skipped one at a time on the crest of the wave, like a synchronized swimming routine. I‰ЫЄm positive that for one brief moment the sight made believers of us all. Except one man. He‰ЫЄd retraced his steps to fetch the gold taels he‰ЫЄd hidden in the boat‰ЫЄs fuel tank. He never came back. Perhaps the taels made him sink, perhaps they were too heavy to carry. Or else the current swallowed him as punishment for looking back, or to remind us that we must never regret what we‰ЫЄve left behind.

‰ЫПThat memory definitely explains why I never leave a place with more than one suitcase. I take only books. Nothing else can become truly mine. I sleep just as well in a hotel room, a guest room or a stranger‰ЫЄs bed as in my own. In fact, I‰ЫЄm always glad to move; it gives me a chance to lighten my belongings, to leave objects behind so that my memory can become truly selective, can remember only images that stay luminous behind my closed eyelids. I prefer to remember the flutters in my stomach, my light-headedness, my upheavals, my hesitations, my lapses ‰Ы_ I prefer them because I can shape them according to the colour of time, whereas an object remains inflexible, frozen, unwieldy.‰Ыќ

3.5 :)

lovely, evocative, touching

It's a slim volume that in its spare verse and short chapters bring to mind poetry more than prose, even translated from the original french. It's a series of patchwork vignettes bouncing lightly from Vietnam, to the voyage over, to the immigrant experience in Quebec and back again.