Customer Reviews

The Deep Green Sea

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Deep Green Sea is a novel set in present-day Vietnam. The story focuses on a love affair between a middle-aged American, Benjamin Cole, a Vietnam veteran, and a young Vietnamese woman, Le Thi Tien. Returning to Ho Chi Minh City thirty years after the war, Ben meets Tien, a woman who finds herself trapped between the Vietnam of the past and the Vietnam of the present.

In 1966, Ben was in Saigon driving trucks for the Unites States Army. The story takes place almost thirty years later, when Ben returns to Ho Chi Minh City and meets (and falls in love with) Tien, who finds herself trapped between traditional Vietnamese beliefs and the policies of the new Communist state.

Butler, a master of first-person narration, alternates this story between the sensuous and lyrical voices of Ben and Tien as he explores the conflicts inherent in the old and the new Vietnam and as the couple struggle to find their own special place in the world. Even though Vietnam is a place of horror and violence for Ben, he comes to feel at home with Tien, more so than he ever felt with his own family in Midwest America.

Living in a tiny apartment in Saigon, Tien works for the government as a guide for foreign tourists. Outwardly conservative, she appears to follow all Communist Party guidelines, however, Tien is a woman secretly longing for the intimacy and passion that only sexual and emotional fulfillment can bring. Ben and Tien are both a bit of the misfit, the outcast. Tien's mother, a prostitute, fled Vietnam when the Communists gained control and left Tien with her grandmother. And, although Tien grew up believing her father to be dead, she often feels his presence near her.

Far too much of this book takes place in the bedroom, as Ben and Tien consummate their new-found love. And, as we learn the story of Ben and his years in Vietnam during the war, we also come to sense the ending of the story, many, many pages before it actually arrives.

James Olen Butler, however, is a wonderful writer and this book, although thin on plot and character, is still wonderfully written. Some of the best images are contained in Tien's descriptions of traditional Vietnamese religion, folklore and mythology.

Butler is a writer who is sensitive to the problems in Vietnam and the longterm effects of war, on both a country and on individuals. I would recommend his Pulitzer Prize winning A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, however. The Deep Green Sea, although moody and atmospheric and certainly well-written, is just too trite and predictable to be worthwhile. Two stars for the quality of the writing, but that is all I can justify.

To some this will be a wonderful erotic and tragic novel. To me it is simply a tragic tedious read with some startling moments.

It is told in parallel, that is two people alternating their thoughts through the sections. There are no chapters as such. First it is her, then it is him. Tien and Ben in love and making a meal of it, on and on until the closing section where the tragedy is finally consummated.

Ben, a Vietnam veteran, has returned to that country years after the war ended to round off his life as it were. He seeks to come to terms with what happened and with himself. He walks a street, which in 1966 was lined with bars, and where he fell in love with a prostitute forming a close relationship with her. Now on that same street he has a chance meeting with Tien, a twenty-six year old tour guide, abandoned by her bar-girl mother in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists. Kim, as the mother was known, feared retribution after giving birth to a child fathered by one of the enemy.

Ben and Tien are soon in the throes of passionate love, therefore much of the book takes place in the bed chamber where their thoughts to and fro while they explore each other's bodies. This is where their past secrets emerge to such a degree that they feel there is a slight possibility they could be father and daughter indulging in a bout of incest. Obviously this throws cold water on the lovers, and there is only one thing to do, and that is to find Tien's mother so they can continue unheeded with their relationship.

There is no doubt here that the author Robert Olen Butler is more than an accomplished writer, but it doesn't lessen the fact that this novel reads like someone wrote it at a creative writing class.

Robert Olen Butler has explored an "unspeakable" topic in this novel. This is a beautiful love story between Ben, a forty-four year-old Vietnam Veteran, and Thien, a twenty-six year-old Amerasian woman. Though a generation apart, they complement each other with their searches for fulfillment: Ben, for a closure which he supposedly finds, and Thien, for the love of her life. Butler is a master storyteller who excels at giving voice to his two protagonists. The prose is lyrical, sensual, and rawfully honest. The most harrowing aspect of the novel is that it raises more questions in the end than it answers. If that is Butler's intention, then he has succeeded. A romantic at heart, I cried for the torn lovers... It's a novel worth losing sleep over...

I enjoyed this book tremendously! I read it in one sitting, even though I "knew" the outcome, I couldn't wait to see how it was handled. It was a beautiful, complex story full of history, culture, dreams and fairytales. This was my first Robert Olen Butler book and I can't wait to read another one. I'm always pleased to come across a sensitive love story by a male author. And, this one touches all the senses!

This story takes us to Vietnam in two time periods: the mid-1990's, when Ben, a former GI, revisits Saigon in search of closure to his past, and perhaps explore new beginnings; and 1966-7, when Ben was first there, in the midst of a confusing and senseless war. He, like so many others, was drawn into the world of the easy sex and opportunity of the 1960's in Vietnam for men in his position. He lost his innocence there with a sweet bar-girl, and afterwards returned home to a disappointing life in the American mid-west.

On his return to Vietnam, he falls deeply for a beautiful young tour guide, Tien, young enough to be his daughter. What follows over the course of a few days with Tien is reconciliation with his past, but also opening of old wounds and much heartache for both of them. Tien is equally smitten by Ben. To reveal more than this would be to reveal some of the premise of the story.

Butler is a very sensitive writer, who is able to convey superstition, mystery and realism side by side. He writes first from the perspective of Tien, then Ben, then alternates back and forth throughout. This proves very effective, and allows the reader to experience both aspects of the developing relationship, feeling both the triumph and traumas of each as they unfold. There is a desperation and loneliness to both characters which draws them together, both feeling unreconciled to their pasts, and seeing their relationship with eachother as a form of absolution.

This is a very effective and affecting story, despite some events that can at times seem contrived or overly coincidental. But there is much symbolism and a haunting sense of tragedy here, and I found myself holding my breath on several occasions, not quite believing what I was reading, shocked but moved. Butler obviously loves Vietnam and respects her people. This is a wonderful story.

I was immediately pulled into this novel by the short chapters and the earnest voices of the two characters. Ben is a Vietnam War veteran, returning to that country after its inevitable "fall" to communism in order to search his soul and perhaps find some closure. Tien is a young Vietnamese woman to whom Ben is immediately drawn, and has some healing of her own to do. The two begin a very tender (and tentative) love affair which consumes them both.

I enjoyed the addition of Vietnamese culture and landmarks, especially because they lent a sense of historical realism to a novel which, with Butler's sparse, poetic prose, may have seemed dream-like without them. The chapters alternate between Ben and Tien's points of view, pulling the reader into their tragic drama and making it impossible to look away even for a second. What I especially liked was that the book truly remains a love story, with Tien and Ben both receiving the closure they've so desperately been seeking (though in not the ways they may have imagined-- or maybe they did).

_The Deep Green Sea_ is a sad, touching novel about the aftermath of war, the bonds that bring people together, and unintended consequences. Not everyone will like this book, but I do guarantee that the story won't easily leave you.

I read Robert Olen Butler's The Deep Green Sea in a couple of sittings. His prose is sensual, fast-paced and hypnotic. His frequent use of Hemingway-like compound sentences flow like a fast-moving river. I like the uncanny way Butler is able to get inside the minds of his characters. Like almost all of his other work, Butler imbues his story with people struggling to come to terms with the tragedy that was the Vietnam War. I liked the love affair between Ben and Tien, though it seemed to happen unrealistically fast. Though it is possible that their true relationship to one another could be revealed after they find Tien's mother, the odds of this happening in real life make the ending seem improbable. And it struck me as melodramatic that Ben would jump off the cliff in the end after the "discovery" is made. The sense that I had raced through the beautiful prose of the book only to feel somewhat let down is tempered by Butler's ability to reveal the deepest thoughts and reactions of his characters.

This great book by Robert Olen Butler shows more than any other Vietnam book, the experience of an ordinary American soldier returning to Vietnam to figure out why he is returing there. The careful blending with Vietnamese folklore, the points of view of the two main characters, and the whole idea of an American trying to come to terms with why this land draws him so makes for a fantastic read and perspective. One does not want to put this book down, only to read each beautifully written page. Clearly this author has the capability to cross a "monkey bridge" when describing Vietnamese culture and the American experience with Vietnam.

Viet Nam veteran Ben Coles returns to Ho Chi Minh City, a place he knew as Saigon over three decades ago. Ben seeks to find the peace of mind that has eluded him since his combat days. In Nam, Ben meets Le Thi Tien, whose mother, a prostitute to the American soldiers, disappeared in 1975 when the North overran the South. Ben and Tien are immediately attracted to each other and share sexual experiences.

However, when they compare their experiences, Ben wonders if Tien, whose father was allegedly an American, could be his child. The duo decides to travel into the countryside in search of Tien's mother who supposedly returned to her small village in order to avoid retribution for hanging out with the Americans from the conquering Communists.

THE DEEP GREEN SEA is a well written work of fiction that could easily be considered a great work of art. The scenes involving seventies and nineties Viet Namese culture and society are some of the best prose written in the nineties. The love scene, though brilliantly scribed in alternating voices, seem to take away from the strength of the story line and just slow it down. Robert Olen Butler, winner of a Pulitzer (A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN) knows and describes Nam like no one else and though his latest novel may not win the Pulitzer Prizel it is still a damn good book.

Harriet Klausner

To say I expected more from a Pulitzer Prize winner is an understatement. Where to start? I found it unbearably cheesy. It seemed liked every 3rd sentence by both characters began with the word 'and' - a device that can add weight to a sentence if used sparingly, but not when it's used constantly - it turned the book into an oh-so-reverent cheese-fest ('And then there was the sea, spread before us. And Ben was with me, and it was good'). Also, for a novel so infused with sex, the priggishness of both characters was maddening - neither one was able to refer to their own bodies like adults ('He touched me in my special place' or 'and then she reached for that most sensitive part of me' over and over and over). The plot was pretty absurd too - even allowing for the odds of Ben being Tien's father, just the mere fact that he recognized Tien's mother as his former lover DID NOT NECCESSARILY MAKE HIM TIEN'S FATHER! Tien's mother was a prostitute, for Pete's sake - she must have had hundreds of American lovers. Finally, I nearly gagged when, after they learn the 'truth,' Ben prevents Tien from jumping to her death by saying, "Only one of us" and then jumps. Butler is obviously a skilled writer, in that he writes aesthetically pleasing sentences. But this novel is a total failure in my opinion.