Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
If You Lived Here
and over 140,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more
|
||||||||||||
Better Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam (Adventura Books) by Dana Sachs  (17)
|
When You Were Born in Vietnam: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from Vietnam by Bartlett Therese  (10)
$12.24
|
Beyond the Blue by Leslie Gould (3)
$11.89
|
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan  (120)
|
Children of the Dragon: Selected Tales from Vietnam by Sherry Garland (5)
$12.24
|
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Sachs revisits in her fiction debut many of the themes she explored in A House on Dream Street, her memoir about living in Vietnam in the early 1990s. The story begins in Wilmington, N.C., where Xuan Mai has built a successful Asian grocery business in the more than 20 years since she fled Hanoi. Estranged from her family in Vietnam and reluctant to form new connections in America, Mai doesn't know what to make of Shelley Marino, an American customer who asks a lot of questions about Vietnam. It turns out that Shelley is trying to adopt a Vietnamese boy. However, Shelley's husband, Martin, who has two grown sons from a previous marriage, forces Shelley to choose between him and adopting, prompting Shelley to urge Mai to accompany her to Vietnam to complete the adoption. Once there, Mai discovers a land very different from the war-torn, impoverished country she left in the late 1970s. The novel, alternating Shelley's and Mai's narration, comes alive when the setting shifts to Vietnam, revealing the author's love for the rapidly changing country. Mai's reconciliation with her past is absorbing, Shelley's story is less so, and the adoption plot line relies too heavily on bureaucratic dysfunction for its drama. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
This first novel, which reworks the territory covered in Sachs' memoir, The House on Dream Street (2000), features dual narration by a reserved Vietnamese entrepreneur and a compassionate, efficient mortician's wife as they form an unlikely friendship. After suffering through miscarriages and infertility treatments, Shelley Marino feels that, at 42, she is running out of options. When a Vietnamese child becomes available for adoption, she is disheartened to learn that her husband, Martin, who has two sons from a previous marriage, doesn't feel he has the energy or the heart to raise another child. She turns to her new friend Xuan Mai, who fled Vietnam 23 years ago after a tragic accident left her estranged from her family. Mai agrees to accompany Shelley to Vietnam, and what they find there--a vibrant culture, a stifling bureaucracy--changes them in unforeseen ways. Sachs' earnest approach to big topics, such as the Vietnam War, often falls flat; it's the small moments--the sight of blue rice fields, the sweet taste of lychees--that are affecting. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Sachs revisits in her fiction debut many of the themes she explored in A House on Dream Street, her memoir about living in Vietnam in the early 1990s. The story begins in Wilmington, N.C., where Xuan Mai has built a successful Asian grocery business in the more than 20 years since she fled Hanoi. Estranged from her family in Vietnam and reluctant to form new connections in America, Mai doesn't know what to make of Shelley Marino, an American customer who asks a lot of questions about Vietnam. It turns out that Shelley is trying to adopt a Vietnamese boy. However, Shelley's husband, Martin, who has two grown sons from a previous marriage, forces Shelley to choose between him and adopting, prompting Shelley to urge Mai to accompany her to Vietnam to complete the adoption. Once there, Mai discovers a land very different from the war-torn, impoverished country she left in the late 1970s. The novel, alternating Shelley's and Mai's narration, comes alive when the setting shifts to Vietnam, revealing the author's love for the rapidly changing country. Mai's reconciliation with her past is absorbing, Shelley's story is less so, and the adoption plot line relies too heavily on bureaucratic dysfunction for its drama. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
This first novel, which reworks the territory covered in Sachs' memoir, The House on Dream Street (2000), features dual narration by a reserved Vietnamese entrepreneur and a compassionate, efficient mortician's wife as they form an unlikely friendship. After suffering through miscarriages and infertility treatments, Shelley Marino feels that, at 42, she is running out of options. When a Vietnamese child becomes available for adoption, she is disheartened to learn that her husband, Martin, who has two sons from a previous marriage, doesn't feel he has the energy or the heart to raise another child. She turns to her new friend Xuan Mai, who fled Vietnam 23 years ago after a tragic accident left her estranged from her family. Mai agrees to accompany Shelley to Vietnam, and what they find there--a vibrant culture, a stifling bureaucracy--changes them in unforeseen ways. Sachs' earnest approach to big topics, such as the Vietnam War, often falls flat; it's the small moments--the sight of blue rice fields, the sweet taste of lychees--that are affecting. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
|
