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Loading... Dragonfish (2015)by Vu Tran
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I am glad I've read this book, it shifted some gears, helped to better understand some very important for me persons. Very well-written, kept me entertained. ( ) I'm not sure if I really loved this book or if it was just so different than everything I've read recently that I loved the novelty, but this was an incredibly enjoyable audiobook listen. Vu Tran is an Vietnamese-American writer who wrote about a white cop that believes himself to be in love with is ex-wife, a Vietnamese-American woman. The racial identities feel important because throughout this story, there's a sort of underlying discussion about what makes interracial relationships difficult. And while this phenom isn't unique to white men, through this white male protagonist, Tran shows us how a man can claim to love a woman without really knowing her, how he can claim to love her while also hurting her. We also get a very keen sense of this white man's entitlement, of his inclination to forgive himself of his sins while also judging others (all Vietnamese people) of the same sins extremely harshly. His lack of self-awareness is...*chefs kiss*. Near the end of the book, a Vietnamese man calls our protagonist "pathetic" and I'd wholeheartedly agree. He's just another entitled white cop with daddy issues. But I loved reading about him. What I like about Tran's writing though is that he plays it very straight. He writes the protagonist like a hero because the protagonist sees himself as a hero. He does things that make him unlikeable to me, but it didn't feel like the author was forcing that "unlikeable" characteristic on the hero, he was just telling the facts. I also loved Suzy as a second protagonist. She falls into the "bad mom" trope that I love. She is a complex woman who never really let marriage or motherhood completely consume her. And it seemed like her core desire was to be understood, which was hard because of her complexity. We spend most of the book watching this cop make every effort to hunt her down and understand her, while also getting stories from Suzy about her past. This was the first neo-noir I read and I could see myself reading a lot more. A classic noir with a literary inner life. Really explores how sometimes we really don't know those we think are closest to us, and what drives them. Follows all the conventions of the noir, with a not-always-that-sharp protagonist, the femme fatale and a gangster. All the characters have flaws. But also explores the impacts of being a refugee / immigrant and how one traumatic event can shape your life in ways not always visible to others. And I just love book cover design...
“Dragonfish” is a strong first novel for its risk taking, for its collapsing of genre, for its elegant language and its mediation of a history that is integral to post-1960s American identity yet often ignored. Above all, Tran’s novel is a refreshing and entertaining story. And in the end, that may be all it needs to be.
"Robert, an Oakland cop, still can't let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she's disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who's blackmailing Robert into finding her for him. As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny's sadistic son, 'Junior,' and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage. He finds himself chasing the ghosts of her past, one that reaches back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, as his investigation soon uncovers the existence of an elusive packet of her secret letters to someone she left behind long ago. Although Robert starts illuminating the dark corners of Suzy's life, the legacy of her sins threatens to immolate them all"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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