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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
One difficulty of novels with multiple stories and points of view is that readers can become attached to an especially charismatic character and not want to relinquish him or her. So it is with Grass Roof, Tin Roof, Dao Strom's thoughtful and adept debut. The book begins in Vietnam on the verge of the Communist takeover and describes the dangerous career in political journalism of Than, a young woman whose real aim had been to write a romantic serial inspired by Gone with the Wind. Than's lover and mentor, a mysterious figure named Giang, has been signing his own articles with her name, and eventually, although the words are rarely hers, Than acquires the manner and confidence of an investigative reporter. When the newspapers are shut down, and Than gives birth to Giang's illegitimate daughter, she has little choice but to leave for America. Another writer would stop the tale at this crucial transition, but Strom's novel is not a simple love story set against brutality and oppression. Like a vine, her narrative twists and pushes forward, flowering at unexpected points. The American portions of Grass Roof, Tin Roof are as well sustained, if not as vividly hued, as the opening. If we regret the shift in focus away from the engaging Than, we are soon enough drawn into the lives of Than's children and their Danish-born stepfather.
One difficulty of novels with multiple stories and points of view is that readers can become attached to an especially charismatic character and not want to relinquish him or her. So it is with Grass Roof, Tin Roof, Dao Strom's thoughtful and adept debut. The book begins in Vietnam on the verge of the Communist takeover and describes the dangerous career in political journalism of Than, a young woman whose real aim had been to write a romantic serial inspired by Gone with the Wind. Than's lover and mentor, a mysterious figure named Giang, has been signing his own articles with her name, and eventually, although the words are rarely hers, Than acquires the manner and confidence of an investigative reporter. When the newspapers are shut down, and Than gives birth to Giang's illegitimate daughter, she has little choice but to leave for America. Another writer would stop the tale at this crucial transition, but Strom's novel is not a simple love story set against brutality and oppression. Like a vine, her narrative twists and pushes forward, flowering at unexpected points. The American portions of Grass Roof, Tin Roof are as well sustained, if not as vividly hued, as the opening. If we regret the shift in focus away from the engaging Than, we are soon enough drawn into the lives of Than's children and their Danish-born stepfather.
Dao Strom, like the child of Than and Giang, was born in Saigon to a literary mother and brought to America as an infant during the 1975 exodus. With a sagacity that belies her youth, she evokes the divided mind of the refugee and the child of two cultures. --Regina Marler
From Publishers Weekly
Strom's debut novel traces a Vietnamese family's bumpy path to immigration and assimilation in California. Trinh Ahn Tran is a freethinking Saigon journalist in the 1970s-one of few such women-known for witty columns that critique all sides of Vietnamese politics. Interrogated and increasingly harassed by the government, Tran flees Saigon with her two children in a 1975 airlift. In California, she marries a condescending, authoritarian Danish immigrant, Hus Madsen, who frightens and alienates her children as well as his and Tran's own daughter. Strom tells the story from the alternating perspectives of mother, son and two daughters. Her description of the Saigon newspaper office and the flight from Vietnam is gripping, and she offers some affecting scenes of the family's tenuous suburban existence as well: a redneck accuses Hus ("Hoss") of shooting his dog in a tense confrontation. Tran's withdrawn teenage son, Thien, gets stuck in a paralyzing relationship with his girlfriend, Valerie, whose recitation of AA mantras drives him nuts. Strom's characterizations are uneven, however; she could have used a lighter touch in depicting Hus's cruelty, and the sections about idealistic middle daughter April and the trip she takes to Saigon in 1996 are less effective. The narrative loses steam as it turns to the children's coming-of-age struggles, which tend to be familiar fare about first sexual encounters and racial identity questions. With her spare, matter-of-fact prose, Strom shows promise, but she doesn't manage to sustain the narrative tension and acuity that distinguish the first half of this novel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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