The Deep Green Sea: A Novel. [Paperback]

Robert Olen. Butler (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Henry Holt (1997)
• ASIN: B000KIP7DW
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Way Too Predictable, December 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Deep Green Sea: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars All depends on your point of view, September 17, 1999

By 

ZZR-RR (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Deep Green Sea: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wrenching love story... will haunt your memory forever..., September 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Deep Green Sea: A Novel (Hardcover)

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...