Customer Reviews

Vietnam, My Love

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The novel is a revelation of how much one is willing to pay for freedom and happiness. This captivating story will touch your heart regardless of your background. The author's sincere style of storytelling is moving. He's able to make the reader experience all the emotions that the main character is feeling. The book tells an enlightning and educational story depicting the unimaginable saga of the Boat People. I definitely recommend it!

Frank Vinh Noan has written a winsome and marvelous book that captures one's imagination. Part of the charm of the book is simply the story the author tells. However, the real charm is the way the author leaves the questions of love of country, love of culture, love of religious commitments, and love and devotion to families, both of one's birth and of one's marriage, as mysteries to be resolved by the reader's thought and imagination. This is not just a book of fiction. It also is a profound history of different cultures, different religions, and different countries, and the forces that brought them together. Then ending is both gripping and convicting, and must be read and felt to begin to understand what happened at the conclusion of the war in Vietnam. Anyone who lived through the period known as the war in Vietnam will have to re-examine assumptions and come to terms with importance of that period of history, both on Vietnam and on the United States. After having read the book several times, I felt I knew the author and his family in a deeply personal way. This is what good reading is all about.

Among all the movies and books that I have read bout the Vietnam war(my father and uncles were officers in the Vietminh and later the North Vietnamese army), only one film truely depict the war and its effect on the Vietnamese. That movie is called "We want to Live", directed and written by Vinh Noan. This book is no less accurate as the film that Vinh Noan have made.

Although a novel, much of this book seems derived from facts. It tells a story of two people, from seemingly different cultures, united by the power of love but cruely torn apart by the war in Vietnam. The book is artistic and descriptive, and will be of interest to anyone who has any feelings about Vietnam. The passages about the attrocities and conditions suffered by the Boat People are very moving and are likely to bring you to tears! Does the story have a happy ending? You'll have to read it to find out!