The Deuce (Hardcover)

by Robert Olen Butler (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Somewhere inside this terribly overwritten novel about a runaway Vietnamese-American adolescent is an affecting sketch struggling to breathe free. Tony Hatcher (born Vo Dihn Thanh) lives in New Jersey with his emotionally distant self-absorbed ex-GI father, and is torn between his rootless present and memories of a boyhood in Saigon where his mother, a prostitute, abandoned him. Running away from home at 16, Tony winds up in New York City, fending for himself in a nightmarish world of crime, drugs, whores and panhandlers. He becomes friends with an alcoholic Vietnam War vet, but a knife-wielding, smooth-talking hustler spells trouble. When Tony's father plasters Port Authority bus terminal with missing-person posters, we know some form of confrontation is in store, but the prolix first-person voice that Butler ( The Alleys of Eden ) assigns to narrator Tony fails to build momentum and never fully convinces.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Immerses us in the cultural dislocation of our time . . . in a voice that is marvelously convincing . . . Readers of The Deuce will have the distinct pleasure of watching a fine novelist as he grapples with his great subject. "-Scott Spencer, The New York Times Book Review

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; Reissue edition (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805031979
• ISBN-13: 978-0805031973
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,291,489 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant take on the Vietnamese-American experience, February 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Deuce (Paperback)

Walt Whitman once said: "It is the job of the poet to resolve all tongues unto his own." In this regard, Robert Olen Butler is a true poet in the way he goes inside the head of a teenage Vietnamese American boy to create a living, breathing character that anyone with a heart should be able to identify with. This book should be taught in American high schools. (P.S. For a fascinating non-fiction companion to this book, read "Born to Kill" by T.J. English, the true story of a Vietnamese-American gang.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book...lots of perspective on USA and Vietnam, April 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Deuce (Paperback)

Butler has written a great piece on an Amerasian's experience in New York City during the 80's. The author shows the main character's struggle with figuring out his identity and the different types of people who live on the fringes in New York City. A great fusion of 1970s Saigon and 1980s New York.

5.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging, Readable Story, January 17, 2005

By	Gregory Bascom (San Jose Costa Rica) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Deuce (Paperback)

THE DEUCE, originally published in September 1989, was the sixth of ten novels written by Robert Olen Butler. This review is for the Henry Holt and Company paperback edition, 303 pages, reissued in January 1994 after Mr. Butler received the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of stories, A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN.

In late August 1974, on Wandering Souls Day, a Vietnam War vet named Kenneth returns to Saigon, bargains with a prostitute and claims his then six-year old son, Thanh, an urchin. Kenneth renames his son Anthony James Hatcher and takes him to Point Pleasant, New Jersey where Tony has his own room with a soft bed, TV and computer.

The wondrous rescue from the rancid and dusty alleys of Saigon doesn't go well; Tony cannot assimilate the affluent American culture or bond with his father. He struggles for an identity. He wants to be Vietnamese, but his eyelids expose his half-breed origin and he feels caught between two cultures, unable to blend into either. And although Tony hears the echoes of his mother's moans with a rotation of GI's, and recalls her mannerisms that he now recognizes as drug addiction, fond memories of mom haunt him. So at the age of sixteen, Tony runs away to become a street urchin again, this time in New York City.

In the first 67 pages, Butler weaves Tony's recollections of Vietnam and the early years with Kenneth into the psychological turmoil of the boy's mid-teens. The remainder of the story centers on Tony's struggle to survive in the environs of sleazy forty-second street and the Port Authority Terminal. Butler's vivid descriptions of that pathetic environment in the summer of 1984 started to depress me and I began to despair waiting for the climax, which I suspect is precisely what the author wants us to feel before he finesses the five-star ending.

Within the first three pages of this literary, first-person narrative, I recognized the author's writing voice from THEY WHISPER. But unlike that novel, Butler arranged THE DEUCE into chapters and used conventional paragraphing. THE DEUCE is an engaging, readable story.