Over the Moat: Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam (Paperback)

~ (Author) "EVEN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, the cyclo drivers were trying to line up clients..." (more)
Key Phrases: shrinking bird, dong notes, cyclo drivers

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1992, fresh out of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Sullivan and a classmate are hired by Bicycling magazine to report on their trek from Saigon to Hanoi. The plan mutates into a book-length memoir- cum-love story when 27-year-old Sullivan, from Massachusetts, meets and falls for a Vietnamese shop girl in Hue. The eponymous moat refers to one he must cross on his bike every time he visits Thuy, who lives with her family within the walls of an old imperial citadel. Sullivan extends his trip and then returns for another year to court her-no easy task, given the horde of other suitors, cultural differences and some distrust of Americans. Being an outsider has its benefits, however; as the other admirers keep their visits brief, he writes, "I pretended not to know. I stayed and stayed. I bid [the others] farewell... waving while they smoldered into the dark, handicapped by custom, undone by the ignorance of a guy who wore a Day-Glo yellow rain jacket and shorts in a country where only children wore shorts." Sullivan's style is somewhat unpolished and disjointed, detracting from the otherwise engaging tale. Perhaps a few more years (or a couple more trips abroad) would have produced deeper insights than "People had been coming East for answers for centuries, and in some way, I believed that I'd come East to answer questions I hadn't ever asked.... Whenever I tried to focus on the answers, as on a ship on the horizon, I couldn't quite convince myself that they were really there. But if I looked askance, there was enough resolution for certainty."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Cultures clash, but love conquers, with some fascinating twists and plenty of intimate details." --Kirkus Reviews

"Over the Moat tells a tale we sorely need to hear at this moment in history...Elegantly written, redolent of our universal humanity, this is an important book." --Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain

"What a wonderful premise for a novel. But Over the Moat isn't fiction: it's a true story. Sullivan's tenacity, passion, luck, and the purity of his love come through in his prose, and he has succeeded admirably both in the telling of this story and in the living of it." --Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country

"Over the Moat takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the country and the culture, never letting us forget that, as Americans, we're just visitors." --Stewart O'Nan, author of The Names of the Dead and editor of The Vietnam Reader

"James Sullivan has written a brilliant, intimate account of desperation. Cast within the layered textures of contemporary Vietnam, this is a vivid book with irresistible underpinnings: desire and discovery." --Lewis Robinson, author of Officer Friendly

"Here is a book that carries us on a thoughtful journey along the crowded boulevards of dreams and the unlit paths of love and human understanding, in a distant place where we turn a corner and catch an unexpected glimpse of ourselves. It is a gift." --Don J. Synder, author of The Cliff Walk

"Over the Moat is a fine piece of writing. Here is a story about modern Vietnam. Here is the much celebrated city of Hue. Here are two lovers trying their best despite language and culture to merely and genuinely be in love. What could be simpler?" --Larry Heinemann, author of the National Book Award-winning Paco's Story
-- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312422377
• ISBN-13: 978-0312422370
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 22 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,035,224 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great and exotic love story, October 29, 2004

By	D. Vinh (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Transport yourself to another time and another place through this love story, set in ancient Hue. James Sullivan did a great job explaining his thinking and feelings, and tried his best to explain how Vietnamese think. He did an excellent job giving the reader a feel for Vietnamese culture and beliefs from a very personal perspective. The story took a while to develop, and the jumping back-and-forth between various periods of time can be confusing at first. A must read for anybody who is thinking of traveling to Vietnam. Hue has changed much since this story (I visited there last year), so this book captured a Hue that's in the past.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a terrific book, January 29, 2004

By	Nigel Craig (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This book was wonderful on so many different levels. First of all the story of Sullivan traveling to Vietnam and falling in love is rendered with such honesty and intelligence. I felt as though I was with him for this long adventure, and when things begin to become complicated, as the obstacles between the two grow, I found myself rooting out loud for everything to work out. It's what has been missing from all the "travel memoirs" - the sense that real living person with a mind and heart is behind the writing - Bravo to Sullivan.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Culture shock without the shock, June 12, 2006

By	William Whyte (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the true story of an American who, on a bike tour through Vietnam, is suddenly smitten by a girl at a kiosk in Hue. On the way back from Hanoi to Saigon by train, he impulsively gets off and goes back to her house to ask her to be his. She says that she can't answer yet, she can't answer till she's known him for a year. Can he wait a year? Can he wait a year in Hue?

It's a great setup for a book, but I was hoping to enjoy it more than I did. The problem is that the author is a bit incurious. The love story unfolds slowly, and during the time it unfolds -- a whole year -- it's not clear what he does. He writes in notebooks, but it all seems to be observations of himself. He can't get a job because of local regulations, except for some occasional work teaching English, so he isn't thrown into situations where he encounters Vietnamese other than Thuy and her family on a daily basis; and he doesn't try to integrate with other Vietnamese groups, perhaps to avoid causing trouble for them; so it means that the only Vietnamese he encounters are friendly barmen and hotelkeepers, and opponents in the police force and the immigration services. There are some nice descriptive passages and some of the turning points in the love story are genuinely tender and touching, but there are also some startlingly infelicitous sentences for a writing workshop graduate: "You couldn't forge mettle with the notes of an inspirational soundtrack running through your head" or "On day seventeen, my appetite quietly called for more than the couple of spoonfuls that had been satisfying it". The Publisher's Weekly review on this page comes closest to matching my own feelings: if the author had dug deeper and spoken more directly the book could have been much, much stronger.

Pleasant, but I was hoping for more. I would recommend Andrew X. Pham's Catfish and Mandala instead as a truly insightful Vietnamese-American cultural encounter, though from a different angle. And it has bikes too!