Customer Reviews

Tatjana Soli'sThe Lotus Eaters: A Novel [Hardcover](2010)

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So much has been written about the Viet Nam era, and now along comes author Tatjana Soli with the evident intention of writing a "great" novel about these times.

The funny thing is that, against all odds, she has succeeded in doing so, at least up to a certain point.

I lived through the Viet Nam era through my teens and into my twenties. Author Soli brings back a lot of memories, though not necessarily good ones; but she captures the spirit of the era with an uncanny accuracy--- and yet as nearly as I can tell (biographical information is sparse) she did not herself live through those days. Her research must have been superb and she must have talked with many a Viet Nam veteran, Viet Nam refugee, and many others besides.

She shows us Viet Nam as it really was, the good and the bad; she shows us American soldiers as they really were: mostly young and scared and far from home, yet capable of great bravery and nobility as well as the base acts associated with soldiers from time immemorial.

This is not an anti-war book per se, although it shows the horrors of war. The perspective of the book is balanced. Viet Nam and the Vietnamese are bathed in the light of realism, just as are Americans. The book asks us to sympathize with the plight of the Vietnamese, and who cannot? Yet we sympathize with the Americans as well as the war grinds on, becoming hopeless and eventually, lost.

Who can forget among those who lived through those days the sight of the Communist flag flying from the American embassy at the fall of Saigon in April, 1975? The author has us live--- or relive-- that infamous day, and much more.

At its core, the story, such as it is, is about an American photo journalist who starts out as a naive and unskilled photographer but who, through time, loses her innocence even as she learns her craft. She has her first love affair with another American photo journalist, this one as cynical as he is seasoned. Her second love affair is with a Vietnamese who has a dark and suspect background, and yet their mutual love redeems them both in the end.

The writing is superb, the imagery masterful, the story-telling excellent. It's just that there really isn't a lot of connected storyline. As mentioned above, author Soli seems deliberately to have set out to write something "great" and storyline is only an incidental tool. The novel is more about Viet Nam itself than it is about the characters in the novel, who could have been selected from any of a myriad of possibilities. While Soli integrates the characters into the novel very well, it is not the characters that make the book come alive: instead, it is the era and the setting. It is very telling that the ending is both rushed and sketchy; after some 360 or so pages of detailed exposition the denouement is wrapped up in under 20 pages of spare prose.

Do I recommend this book? Of course. It is one of the best Viet Nam era novels I've ever come across, maybe even *the* best. Just be aware that if the times are familiar to you, don't expect this to be any easy book to read, especially if you have memories that you would rather not call back. The book takes you to Viet Nam in the 60s and 70s in a very direct, accurate, and uncompromising matter. That, of course, is the book's real genius and the book's strong draw.

When I read a book that keeps me enthralled to the final page, that is so absorbing I have to tear myself away from it, I find myself amazed (and envious) that anyone can be so gifted. That's how I felt after reading The Lotus Eaters.

Having attended my share of writing seminars, I realize you can't really soar as a writer until you have truly mastered the craft; however, some writers seem to have talent that defies reason. A few paragraphs into this novel, I realized Tatjana Soli's powerful prose would haunt me.

I rarely read war novels, but the plot of this one intrigued me. The main protagonist is Helen Adams, a young American photojournalist covering the Vietnam War, and in Helen, Soli created a character that is complex, courageous, and real--yet flawed at the same time. Both Helen's father and brother were in the military, and her brother lost his life in a Special Forces operation in Vietnam. Helen always felt excluded by the camaraderie between her father and brother, and she is plagued by the sense of having something to prove. This lingering demon has driven her to being in the midst of this historic point and place in time, and Helen is willing to risk almost anything to get a defining, iconic photo. Many of the characters in this novel are addicted to war, like a drug that must repeatedly enter their bloodstream.

Within hours of arriving in Vietnam, Helen meets Sam, a legendary war photographer, and Linh, a Vietnamese photographer and translator. Sam becomes a mentor and guide to Helen, who quickly learns that women are not welcome in the macho world of war. Linh helps her to navigate the murky landscape of a dangerous country that is shifting on a regular basis. Helen's human interest assignments also shift as her willingness to take risks proves her mettle as a serious photojournalist.

"She had proved to herself what she hadn't known before; that under the right circumstances she could be brave. An unknown gift, strange and random, like the ability to play an instrument or be good at a sport."

Soli's prose is gripping, moving, and unflinchingly places you in the middle of the action. I had to stop reading from time to time because the story affected me in a way that was hard to shake off. Told through the multiple viewpoints of Helen, Sam and Linh, we get a 360-degree view of the nightmare that is war and the bond these individuals developed with each other.

I was deflated and relieved when I turned the final page of The Lotus Eaters. It was unlike any other book I've read recently: beautiful and somewhat unsettling. If you want to know how to write a great novel, ask Tatjana Solis.

Originally published on the Feminist Review Blog

Helen Adams is a photojournalist in Vietnam - one of the only women covering actual combat, recon, and rescue assignments. She comes to Vietnam as an idealistic college student, determined to make a name for herself, tell the story of the war - and discover the truth of her brother's death in country. During her years in Vietnam, Helen will learn to love two completely different men - and will learn that the true human cost of war is nothing that can be captured in numbers or photographs.

In The Lotus Eaters, the reader experiences the war in Vietnam through the eyes of Helen, and we watch as her idealism is eroded, bit by bit, each piece representing a person she has lost or seen killed. At first finding the American soldiers she accompanies and photographs to be her personal protectors and heroes, she begins to see the way war changes a man until he loses his humanity, and she loses her trust in her country and the military. She is drawn to the experienced photographer Sam Darrow, and afraid of the obsession she detects in him, yet unable to prevent the same obsession from taking hold in her own life.

Ms. Soli has written a devastatingly true novel - not true in the sense that it is based on a real person - but true in that it is so real and authentic that the experience of reading it is like submerging yourself in Helen's experiences. She writes in uneven prose - gorgeous descriptive sentences interspersed with jagged fragments - so that the reader is left feeling restless, unsettled, and unsure. The journey that Helen takes from eager new journalist to jaded photographer almost hurt to read, and yet I couldn't stop until I knew what happened.

We also experience the story through the eyes of Linh, a Vietnamese man who works as an assistant for Sam and Helen, holding close and quiet the secret of his own private war, the losses he has experienced. It is truly an amazing thing that a female author from California could capture the mind and heart of a Vietnamese man so perfectly.

As Helen and Linh's stories being to collide, the book became even more engrossing. As I read the last chapter, with tears streaming down my face, I actually found myself mentally praying for the characters, something that only happens when I'm reading a book that has become completely real to me. I don't know what else to say about this book except that I consider it one of the best books I've read so far this year.

Tatjana Soli's book covers 12 important years in the history of Viet Nam as seen through the lens of war photographer Helen Adams. Starting in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and returning to 1963 to tell the story, it was sometimes unclear what year we were actually reading about. Through the sensate, visceral images of beauty and horror, the reader is drawn into the surreal experience of war and the lives of the people who are in the midst of it. Like the land of the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey, Viet Nam has an intoxicating effect on this group of journalists as they become more addicted to the chase and more isolated from the world beyond the war, less certain of their personal, professional or political boundaries. Her descriptions of the land, its people, the battles (and their aftermath)and the soldiers seem to have come from the author's imagination as much as from historical fact, but did create a palpable sense of timelessness and resignation bumping up against inevitable change and action. I found the character development to be less than satisfying and could not warm up to Helen or her mentor-love interest Darrow. The plot too was thin, just this side of tedious. Every picture tells a story but only a piece of it and it is essential to see many pictures over time to begin to understand the truth. This is not by any means a complete portrait and is more than a bit romanticized, but it is still thought provoking, particularly if discussed within a reading group. For readers interested in further reading, a general bibliography is included.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."
~Ambrose Redmoon


The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli is the story of a brave, young woman, Helen Adams, an untrained but talented photojournalist who travels to Vietnam during the war years, determined to somehow understand more about the death of her brother, who died as a soldier there. As the first woman combat photographer, Helen is teased and not taken seriously by some of the men in the profession, but she manages to persevere.

Published in 2010, Tatjana Soli's debut novel starts with the fall of Saigon in 1975, and goes back in time to Helen's arrival in Vietnam 12 years earlier. Helen is seduced by the beauty of this country in Southeast Asia, with its azure skies and white sand beaches, and also by the Vietnam War (1959 - 1975) itself. For many combat photographers, including Helen, the war is like a drug, a source of adrenaline, fueled by risk and the closeness and presence of death, which give a new, heightened urgency to life. Like the lotus-eaters in Homer's Odyssey, who become addicted to the narcotic fruit and forget about returning home, Helen and other combat photographers become intoxicated by the war in Vietnam and find it hard to leave, even though they risk their lives by staying. In fact, they become adrenaline junkies, who thrive on the excitement, which is followed by brief moments of relief at their survival. In this state, Helen begins a love affair with a seasoned photojournalist, Sam Darrow, and a friendship with his assistant, an enigmatic Vietnamese man, Linh, and the story unfolds.

While I have read literature about World War II, this was my first novel about the Vietnam War, in which 3 to 4 million Vietnamese, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and about 60,000 American soldiers lost their lives. For me, it's always difficult to read about the devastation of war, although the writing in The Lotus Eaters is beautiful, and the story kept me up reading late at night (so much so that I became temporarily nocturnal). The author uses descriptive language, but she doesn't overdo it, so my imagination was ignited. Although I struggled to get through some of the violent parts--injury and death are omnipresent--I was rewarded by a rich and layered reading experience, by images as uncompromising and haunting as war photographs in Life magazine. Like the characters in the novel--Helen, Darrow, Linh, Robert, Matt, and others--I was fascinated and repulsed simultaneously by the events in this affecting book. (After reading The Lotus Eaters, I may need to read a sweet romance, or an English novel about manners, to recuperate from my Vietnam adventure.) Along with the violence, destruction, and death, Helen finds love, and a real sense of purpose in life.

Above all else, The Lotus Eaters is a story about courage. A story about a young woman who breaks into a field previously off-limits for women. A story about a woman who risks her life to give the world an honest look at the atrocities of war, and a few glimpses of humanity. A story about a woman who chooses to love, even though she is not sure that she will live to see another day. The Lotus Eaters is a riveting novel about having courage and hope even in the worst circumstances.

Tatjana Soli's unique ability to weave vivid details into poetic imagery transported me into a magical place. I found myself drawn in, with a sweet surrender, into my own lotus addiction. I remained engaged until the last page and now I'm in withdrawal. I can't wait for her next novel.

Tatjani Soli's The Lotus Eaters is a stunning debut novel set in the Vietnam War. Helen Adams drops out of college and makes her way to Saigon, hoping to witness history in the making. She learns the trade of combat photographer from Sam Darrow, a veteran journalist who becomes her lover. Helen conquers her fears, survives combat, and masters the art of distilling a relentless human tragedy down into single images. Like many of the soldiers she documents, Helen is sent home wounded, only to find that there's no longer any place for her stateside. Back in Vietnam for a second time, Helen falls in love with Linh: a mysterious cross between photojournalist, soldier, and spy--a man tragically tugged at by the foreign and domestic forces tearing his country apart.
Tatjana Soli has created an epic war novel, with an ambitious scope that spans years, characters, and countries. Her book belongs among the highest tier of the Vietnam canon. Here, Vietnam is more than a war. We see urbanites and expats in Saigon, farmers and fishermen in small villages, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, journalists with a range of motives, as well as protesters and grieving parents in the States.
With a strong woman behind the lens and under fire, Soli has uniquely bridged the gap between the soldiers in the field and the observers around the dining room table. The book is at once a tremendous document of a telling era and a timeless story of love and aspiration. The Lotus Eaters isn't just about how we fight wars; it's about how we live with them, how we watch them, and how we turn them into history.

Numerous other reviews have paraphrased the story arc far better than I could hope too. For me, this was an incredibly gripping read. Soli's writing is mesmerizing - I felt like I had been transported to Vietnam - the sights, sounds, tension and emotion that surrounded her characters were incredibly vivid and real. To me, this is one of the hallmarks of a great book. I loved the alternating use of time periods - it reminded a bit of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. All in all, this was an immensely enjoyable book. I look forward to future works from this author.

Wow! This novel has it all; adventure, love, detail of place and time, the smell, taste and chaos of Vietnam.
I felt transported into the time and place, in a way that seldom happens to this jaded reader. I learned more
about the war reading this novel than I did in many nonfiction books. The author's ability to reel in the reader
in a cool and profound manner, worked from the first page to the end. I have great respect for her attention
to history and place and humanity. You will find you care a great deal about the characters even after you put the
book down. A man's book, a woman's book. Put down your junk food novels and read this!

This is a compelling, feverish novel about an American female combat photographer in the Vietnam War who falls in love with two men - a fellow photographer and mentor, and the Vietnamese man who works for him. It balances the inner turmoil of love with the outer reality of living in a war zone in such a way that they seem inseparable. Comparisons to The Constant Gardener.