Blog Tour: Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

 

Publisher: Algonquin Books
On Sale Date: March 14, 2023
Pages: 352

I reviewed a review copy from the publisher

The moving and impressive story of Dust Child takes the reader to Vietnam in three different time periods, and in every time period  different main characters.

The story starts in the present time, where we meet Phong. Phong is having an interview at the American Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. Phong is an Amerasian and he is trying to travel to the United States to search for his American father, but the interview is without succes, and Phong and his family are not granted a visa.

In 1969, young sisters Trang and Quỳnh, are talked into traveling to Saigon by a girl who works there in a bar, and has returned to their village, with stories of her work with American soldiers where she drinks 'Saigon tea'' with in the Hollywood bar where she works. Trang and Quỳnh's parents are in trouble to pay off big financial debts, and the sisters travel from their rural village to Saigon to work in the Hollywood bar to help their parents by sending money back home. Not knowing yet that the work in the Hollywood includes more then just drinking 'Saigon tea'' and that they have to sleep with American soldiers who are the customers of the bar, while their parents just think they are doing innocent work..

Back in the present time, American Vietnam veteran Dan is in Ho Chi Minh City with his wife Linda. Dan is looking in Vietnam for his girlfriend Kim  and their child from the time he was a soldier during the Vietnam. He frequented the Hollywood bar often where he met her, but he lost contact with her when he had to leave Vietnam and never heard of her ever since, with the help of a local Vietnamese tour guide, he goes on a search, but his wife Linda knows nothing about Kim the first weeks.

The lives in the past and present of the three main characters seems to not be linked to one another, but when Dan finally finds a trace of Kim, their lives seem to be connected to each other in many ways...

I heard many good things about Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's previous book The Mountains Sing, and as I am always very interested in books about or set in Vietnam, I was very excited to get a chance to review her newest book Dust Child 

The book truly overdid my expectations. I think this book is absolutely beautiful and very moving. It is beautifully written. What I loved is the storyline and the fact that it has three different main characters. Or, actually, five to be correct. Phong, Trang and Quỳnh, and Dan and Linda. This way, you see different points of view how they experienced the war in Vietnam. A war that in present time still has effects on the life of people, as we can see through the eyes of them. It gives a realistic few of the hardships the Amerasian children faced after the war and later in life, and how people tried to survive during the war, from both the Vietnamese and the American point of view, where Dan tried to make piece with his past as as a American soldier. This book is in one word brilliant, and this is a book that I truly recommend reading!