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The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Start date: November 15, 2021

Finish date: December 1, 2021

Discussion: Reading List

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Jun 03, 2020 Dree rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-all-winner-short, immigration, 2020-reads, southeast-asia

This novel is very smart, and very dense, and it has a lot to say about colonization, American culture, the French, Vietnam and the Vietnamese, and war. Also immigration and how clueless Americans are about the workers in their midst--shop owners, delivery drivers, neighbors sharing a common wall. They may have been colonels, successful businessmen, or otherwise very successful people in their homelands, now trying to start over as adults and as older adults.

That said, the movie section largely ...more

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Apr 26, 2020 Roy rated it really liked it

Shelves: war

The Sympathizer is a skillfully written book, primarily a novel of ideas. It explores the nature of being two sided. The narrator is the product of a French father and Vietnamese mother. As an adult after being schooled in America he becomes a spy, towing the line between identity as a Capitalist American and a Communist who will never spiritually leave his homeland. He is both unfeeling and remorseful, a sensitive soul and a cold blooded killer, a loyal friend and a lone wolf, the conqueror and The Sympathizer is a skillfully written book, primarily a novel of ideas. It explores the nature of being two sided. The narrator is the product of a French father and Vietnamese mother. As an adult after being schooled in America he becomes a spy, towing the line between identity as a Capitalist American and a Communist who will never spiritually leave his homeland. He is both unfeeling and remorseful, a sensitive soul and a cold blooded killer, a loyal friend and a lone wolf, the conqueror and the conquered, Western and Eastern, Caucasian and Asian. While these ideas are interesting to examine and they are explored with beautiful command of language, this was not a book that generated much emotional attachment. My favorite types of novels are those that wrestle with ideas while also providing characters who we relate to and care for, so that as the writer places them in various situations such as falling in love or being betrayed or finding themselves in mortal danger, we readers are caught up in the moments because in reading these stories we are temporarily living vicariously through the the protagonists. With The Sympathizer there was an emotional distance between what was happening to the narrator and my reaction to it. I don't know for certain but suspect that having all of us connect to him is not the author's prime objective. The narrator is primarily a vehicle through which Viet Thanh Nguyen drives home his points about what is worth living for rather than dying for. It features a twist that you may or may not find shocking, but this is not so much a book of plot (aka what happens) than of philosophy (aka why it happens and if the reason even matters). A novel I would compare it to in tone and beyond is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Both are masterfully written. Both give us plenty to mentally chew on. I recently read another spy novel, American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson. Wilkinson is less poetic and inventive and playful with tongue in or out of cheek metaphors than Viet Thanh Nguyen, and while I enjoyed her debut novel, a main complaint I had about American Spy is that it was too uneventful for what I wanted from a spy story. Perhaps I'm spoiled by James Bond movies and so expected wall to wall action. The Sympathizer delivers more than American Spy in that regards, particularly in the closing section which features the best written torture scene I can recall since reading William Goldman's magnificent Marathon Man years ago. I suppose I should caution readers who steer clear of graphic violence on page that The Sympathizer is probably not the book for them. It is nevertheless a worthy Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner, putting me one step closer in my quest to read all of them.

http://lineaday.blogspot.com/2009/03/... ...more

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Feb 15, 2017 J.D. rated it it was amazing

How many books do you know that win a Pulitzer Prize AND an Edgar Award for Best First Novel? I read about that and had to get this one. It did not disappoint.

On one level it's a spy story, but that's just one of the many layers to this book. It's also about national and racial identity, the warped reflection of those things in popular culture, The Vietnam War, love, loyalty, family...the list goes on and on, building to a tense climax that I found uncomfortably reminiscent of the darker passage ...more

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Jan 16, 2017 Cdrueallen rated it liked it

Funny and well-written but suffers from the common malady of guy fiction focused on violence, which is that the structure of fiction demands a constant escalation of the violence until it becomes cartoonish and overwhelming. The best part of the book is the beginning, in which Saigon falls and the hero and his South Vietnamese associates are forced to evacuate, and the worst part is the ending, where the violence culminates as it usually does in a fury of misogynism.

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Feb 26, 2020 Linda rated it it was amazing

This is one of those powerful and unforgettable stories of homeland, friendship and universal evil. It reinforces what I’ve come to learn from my many travels. That refugees don’t migrate by choice. That in spite of the idea of American exceptionalism, people long to be home. That people love their homelands and do not leave willingly. A bit of background knowledge about the Vietnam War would be pretty essential to an understanding of this complex story. Worth your time and attention!

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