Customer Reviews

If You Lived Here: A Novel

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3 star:		(1)
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This is a beautiful novel of love, yearning and forgiveness--it is almost incidental that it also contains a gorgeous and vivid portrait of Vietnam. If you have ever yearned for a child; if you have ever done wrong and not known how to heal the wound; if you have ever crossed the boundary into a strange, new culture--then you will recognize your experience here, rendered with passion and insight.

This novel is one of the few to explore the topic of foreign adoptin -- a story-line rife with dramatic potential. Sachs brilliantly shows how two women negotiate their blended identities: the Vietnamese shopkeeter who has transplanted herself in America, and the American woman who is about to mother to a Vietnamese child. Vibrating in the background is the complicated history between the two countries. A bravura performance for a first=time novelist.

Ten years in the making, "If You Lived Here" by Dana Sachs is the gripping and lyrical story of the healing friendship between two very different women who travel together to Vietnam, assisting one another on their personal quests. One of the women, Xuan Mai, is a single Vietnamese-American who impulsively fled her family and a poverty-stricken Vietnam 23 years ago under the impetus of an almost unbearable tragedy. The other woman, Shelly, is a married white American from North Carolina who finds herself captivated by Vietnam when her desire for a child leads there, also under very difficult circumstances. The novel twists and turns its way through their uncertain adventure, with fascinating vignettes exposing their characters and emotional experiences. Together the two women, transformed by their individual (yet shared) dramatic journeys to their families, come to their own peace in Vietnam.

In an enriching juxtaposition, the heartwarming story of these two women is interwoven with a lyrical depiction of their two shared countries, northern Vietnam and southern United States. Dana Sachs is a noted author, translator and authority on Vietnamese literature and here, as in many of her books, Vietnam itself becomes a central character. Hanoi seeps through the novel in crystal clear description and riveting poetic narratives, till readers find themselves immersed in this vibrant, many faceted city.

As Director of the Families with Children adopted from Vietnam I have read and published online a number of true life adoption stories. Unlike the reviewer above, I would say that "If You Lived Here" includes very few adoption procedures. Instead, Dana Sachs captures the strong emotions created during the ups and downs of the adoption process to propel the story forward. Dana Sach's ability to reveal the emotions and thoughts of a diverse group of characters is one of the many joys of her novel. The themes she expresses of longing for a child, forgiveness, and past experiences affecting the present are universal.

"If You Lived Here" is a dramatic work of art that will be enjoyed for many years. I highly recommend this book not only to adoptive parents or readers interested in Vietnam, but to anyone who enjoys a great story.

Dana Sachs' first novel "If You Lived Here" tells a wonderful and gripping story of two very diverse women, one from Wilmington, N.C. and the other a Vietnamese/American living in Wilmington, who come together for their own separate reasons. Sachs's descriptions of life in Hanoi, as the two women journey together, makes the reader feel as if he or she is there also. The sights, the smells and the people are all brought to life. This is truly a warm, heartfelt story and I hope Sachs will be coming forth with many more.

In Dana Sach's novel "If You Lived Here", families are built, shattered and rebuilt. Set partly in Wilmington, NC, Shelley Marino marries an older man, Martin, who is raising his two sons. Shelley becomes an integral part of his work and family life. After struggling with infertility, Shelley is offered the opportunity to adopt a Vietnamese boy. Her heart draws her to the child and to Vietnam, while her husband discovers he is unable to travel the physical or emotional road to adoption with her.

Shelley finds a travel companion in Xuan Mai, a Vietnamese woman living and running a grocery in Wilmington. Mai finds the courage to journey back to Vietnam after an absence of more than twenty years, to help Shelly with the adoption but also to heal her own wounds with her family and her country.

Sachs accurately portrays the emotional trials of the adoption process and of becoming a family in a nontraditional way. She layers that story with Mai's struggle to come to the point in her life where she can ask forgiveness from her family and return home again. Sachs' descriptions of Vietnam are vivid and her love for the culture is obvious. Vietnam's struggle to evolve as a country is as riveting a story as Shelley's or Mai's.

Sachs has written a story of culture and family and finding a place in those contexts. She is a fluid story teller and warmly welcomes her readers into the worlds she has created.

The first third of this novel takes place in North Carolina and is a pleasure to read. It introduces some interesting people, starts engaging plots, and is occasionally quite funny. The rest of the novel takes place in Vietnam and is simply and absolutely wonderful. Partly, I got more invested in the characters and the delightful turns of their intertwined stories. But equally important are the off-hand descriptions of Vietnamese culture that make everything so vivid. I actually hoped for traffic on my bus-ride home so I could read a little more.

one of those books you rush home to finish. i loved it.

Adoption is a special way of understanding feelings of other people. When you start this process you need support and help. The reactions of people around you make it clear who really cares for you who loves you

This is what happened to the two women in the novel

If You Lived Here: A Novel

I was drawn to Dana Sachs' novel "If You Lived Here" because one of its settings is Wilmington, North Carolina, where my son lives. But the moment I picked up this wonderful book and started to read, I felt myself gently guided into a world much more complex than any locale. The two main characters, Shelley Marino, a mortician's wife who desperately longs for a child, and Mai, a Vietnamese entrepreneur who owns an Asian grocery in Wilmington and who fled Vietnam and carried a desperate secret with her, have become as real to me as my own family.

Both of these women and the other characters who people this novel walk off the pages and stand before me in flesh and blood. And the story Ms. Sachs tells exposes their hearts in a way that very few books ever have for me. And I am an avid reader who, at the age of 60, has a hard time finding anything new under the sun! Today, it takes a very rare and exceptional book to move me. Ms. Sachs is a wordsmith beyond compare. Not only did I love the path she carved for me, but I found myself savoring the way she used words to exactly tap and reveal her character's souls.

Shelley and Mai are two very strong women who, despite different cultures, forge a wonderful friendship which carries them both on a journey to Vietnam and on a journey of healing and discovery. I simply opened my own heart to them and, while reading their story, I felt suspended from my own life. That is how compelling this book is.

I also received a special bonus while immersed in this story. I am old enough to have lived through the years of our war with Vietnam, and I had a front row seat to its horrors on television newscasts. My myopic view of Vietnam hasn't changed since I was a teenager. In fact, I had put "Vietnam" aside as a memory and as a country which no longer plagues us.

Ms. Sachs, with her beautiful words and her heart's investment in her story, has changed my vision! Her story is so well told and so consuming that she has managed to draw me in another direction entirely.

I plumbed the depths of two women's lives. I struggled with Shelley's husband Martin until he finally opened up and told his story. And when Shelley and Mai and Martin and other characters forgave each other and themselves, I wept and forgave too.

But while doing so, I awoke to the story of Vietnam. The flickering black-and-white images of destruction and human pathos from my teen years have permanently been replaced. I have now discovered, through Ms. Sachs' eyes, a Vietnamese people with beautiful souls and a Vietnam of greens and reds and yellows and blues as palpable as the country right outside my own front door. What a gift! What a release!

Tonight I will settle down into my pillows and start reading Ms. Sachs' memoir of her time in Vietnam, "The House on Dream Street!" I am now hungry to hear more!

A wonderful, luminous novel, beautifully written, deals with a multiplicity of topics and settings. Goes right to the heart of each and delivers truth - what more can one ask for?