The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I feel conflicted here. It took me a long time to work my way into the ornate sentences and long, carefully-crafted thoughts; the story feels overstuffed. But once I finally did (a little over halfway through), I was into it and pulling fast toward the end. A student of history knows the basic outline of the Vietnam War, but Nguyen fills that in with a narrator who straddles many lines—birthright, ethnicity, South vs. North, American vs. Vietnamese. And The Sympathizer does most of its work in undermining the stories Americans have told themselves about our involvement there—from movies to books to college courses. A part of the pleasure of this novel is in having misconceptions stripped away, in being forced to acknowledge the full humanity of people it’s easier to stereotype. But the novel also turns an unflinching eye on the stories the narrator told himself about his cause and his people. The pleasure found in The Sympathizer is slim, but the effects run deep.