Marcelino Truong

This historical fiction started strong as an artist, Tran Van Minh, the son of a petit bourgeois family in Hanoi, finds himself pressed into service with Ho Chi Minh's army to fight the French colonialists in the year leading up to the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. There's tension as he has to fear being killed by the enemy as well as his own comrades if his privileged background is revealed.

Unfortunately, the narrative just runs out of steam halfway through as the paranoia goes on a little too show more long and Minh spends a lot of time just marching around before he settles into a boring role drawing propaganda.

I found it annoying that while the story is entirely in first-person narrative, we are given access to secondary characters thoughts . . . but only when they are thinking how handsome Minh is. It becomes drinking game ludicrous at a certain point, and I started to wonder if the author was self-inserting and stroking his own ego.

(Best of 2023 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto NPR's Books We Love 2023: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels list.) show less

An upper-class Vietnamese family views the onset of the Vietnam War from a privileged perspective in this frustrating muddle of domestic drama and military history. I wish the author had devoted more time to his parents and been more open about their personal relationships with each other. As it is, his Vietnamese father is practically a cipher and his French mother, who he briefly mentions may have been bipolar, mostly comes off as a hateful shrew. I would have loved to learn how they came show more together and how they apparently sustained their marriage for decades after leaving Vietnam. Or alternatively, I wish the creator could have dug deeper into the lives before and after the war of the servants and lower class people who came into contact with the family. As it is, tales of him playing juvenile games with his brother in proximity to a war zone mix poorly with a pedestrian history of the political and military maneuvers going on at the time. show less

This was an interesting comic memoir of a youth in Vietnam during the war. I thought it was interesting for its insider perspective on the war. The author’s father was a South Vietnamese diplomat. I didn’t find the children endearing at all and suspect they were little monsters. I sympathized with his poor, manic depressive mother. She was rich, living well, and far safer than most Vietnamese, but was stuck with a house full of rambunctious children and few outlets for here anxiety.

I show more don’t read that many memoirs because they often depress me. They make me feel like nothing interesting happens in my life. I know that is relative. My life is much more exciting that many, but probably not worthy of a memoir. show less

Interesting read from an era of the Vietnam War that isn't covered as often. Truong mixes history and memoir quite seemlessly. I especially liked learning more about the militant women (this lovely cover is hidden beneath the jacket!) and Madame Nhu--I added Finding the Dragon Lady to my TBR years ago and now have renewed interest in reading it!

ReadHarder: Southeast Asian author