Jun 13

Jun 13 Things We Lost to the Water

Author: Eric Nguyen
Publisher: Knopf
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she copes with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memory and imagination. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong takes up with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity — as individuals and as a family — threatens to tear them apart. But then disaster strikes the city they now call home, and they must find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

A stunning debut novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped.

TL;DR Review

Things We Lost to the Water is a beautiful novel with excellent writing and full characters., about the post-war Vietnamese immigrant experience. I liked it a lot.

For you if: You like multi-POV literary novels.

Full Review

Big thanks to Knopf for granting me a review copy of this book via NetGalley! It was beautiful. I really liked it.

Things We Lost to the Water follows three characters: Huong, who fled Vietnam during the war and came to New Orleans, and her two sons, Tuan and Binh (Ben). We follow their lives over the course of years, from right after Huong arrived in 1978 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Looming behind everything is Huong’s husband and the boys’ father (or perhaps the idea of him), who was supposed to join them in the US. What follows is a story of heartbreak, growth, hope, memory, family, coming of age, and home.

There’s no denying that Eric Nguyen is an excellent, beautiful writer. There were two chapters in particular — one about halfway through and the other at the very end — that took my breath away. They spin around and around, dizzying, suspenseful, and rich with emotion. And the characters in this novel are gorgeous, full and endearing; you root for all of them. I did enjoy the first half of the book better than the second half (which jumps forward in time much more quickly), but the ending chapter was more than worth it. I’ll be watching for what Nguyen writes next, for sure.