Last week the featured book was written by an American who fought in Vietnam. This week let me draw your attention to two books written by women who were born in Vientam, endured part of the American war there, and then ended up in Montreal. Caroline Vu is ten years older than Kim Thuy, but both have written stunning books of life in war torn Vietnam and the immigrant experience in North America. Both have several to their credit, but Thuy's debut novel Ru is my favourite of her oeuvre, while the only one of Vu's that I've read so far is her latest, Catinat Boulevard.
Vu left the country when she was 11: her mother, a doctor, was able to get her and her sisters to the US, and to start a new life there. Thuy was about the same age when her family leflt, but by then Saigon had fallen. She and her family were among the thousands of "boat people" who fled, often in small boats and always to a future that was dreadfully uncertain. Both women are well-educated: Vu is a family doctor, and Thuy is trained as a lawyer. Each also is fluent in English, French and Vietnamese: Thuy writes for publication in French and Vu, in English. Each has two children, and seemingly masses of energy, as witness the number of projects they have successfully undertaken.
It's a truism that there are many ways to tell a story, and Vu's and Thuy's stories certainly bear that out. Despite their similarities, the manner in which each tells hers is strikingly different. Vu's is sprawling--470 pages--and covers the lives of two women who are school friends in the last days of the old Vietnam, plus the life of the son which one of them has with an African-American GI. It begins in the 1960s and ends in 2020. Along the way it deals with pedophilia, begging children, racism, Agent Orange, Communist re-education. and much more.
Thuy's book, on the other hand, is spare and poetic. The trials that the family (modelled on her own, it seems) go through are harrowing, but the message at the end is upbeat. The family may have to work in the fields in Quebec for a spell, but they have unquestionably found a better place for themselves.
Which is better? Hard to say, depends in part on how you like your fiction--long narratives, or short distillations of experience. Perhaps the best thing for you is to read both and decide...
