Name: Things We Lost to the Water
ISBN: 9780593317952

Eric Nguyen

"This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.

A Novel

Things We Lost to the Water

Michaela Hudson

eARC provied by NetGally in exchange for an honest review but I've been and will always be a procastinator so...

Considering this is debut work, I appreciate the author’s effort to highlight the post-American War struggles Vietnamese-Americans went through. But the narrative didn’t do it justice for me. All three main characters felt one-dimensional, each having seemingly only one personality trait to cling onto and to revolve their character around, therefore they lack depth. They didn’t have their own coherent plotlines to follow either, the events were just very random and didn’t significantly affect their personalities. So without a decent storyline and any rather well-built characters, I was left to be disappointed.

I don’t have issues with the author’s English writing, but his usage of foreign words and phrases kinda pissed me off. So many of these Vietnamese words felt redundant and unnecessary. They didn’t show any meaningful cultural details but many were just there for being Vietnamese words. The same goes for the French phrases. If it wasn’t for me having a decent enough knowledge of all these three languages, I would have DNF-ed it a long time ago. And most of them never came with an explanation or translation! If Eric Nguyen meant this fictional experience to be shared and to be empathized by other readers, he should’ve made it more accessible to them. 

In conclusion, this was a very flawed book. But debut works usually have flaws. And I believe in Eric Nguyen to show improvement in his next projects.

Lennox Johnson 

Hương, Tuấn, and Ben are strong characters- the kind where it gets difficult to remember they don't actually exist outside of the story. I found something deeply relatable in each one of them, and I was a bit upset that the book was really over, when I got to the end. This book made me reflect quite a bit on my relationships with my own mother, and my sister, and how disconnected I am to my own heritage. Things We Lost To The water became an instant favourite, and that's not a label that I hand out easily. I hope to see more from Nguyen.

Kimi 

Thank you to Netgalley, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and Eric Nguyen for the ARC in exchange for a review

This story follows a family who escapes Vietnam and immigrates to New Orleans. We see the struggles of the family trying to find familiarity while surviving in a foreign country. Written in Own Voice, this story really shows the dynamic of each character with their struggles and growth. 

The writing is amazing and although the story was a bit rushed at the end, everything as a whole was well put together. The story is close to my heart as the family immigrating here with their struggles and challenges are too realistic for me. The upbringing of the kids with the mother's hopes and expectations made me remember some things about my childhood. I think this is an amazing book to have some insight and perspective, although this is a fictional story most of it was realistic for me as it brought up some old memories about the war. I had to take some time to digest and process this book as again it was too real. I felt melancholy after finishing this book but overall still amazing and beautiful!

Christine Liu

What is the human cost of war — not just in needless deaths, but in futures that could have been? Children robbed of the chance to know mothers and fathers, lives forever marked by trauma from harsh journeys to strange and often inhospitable new lands, creative and intellectual potential lost in the struggle just to survive one day at a time.

A melancholy sense of loss runs like a current through Eric Nguyen's remarkable debut novel about a young mother named Huong who flees from a wartorn Vietnam to New Orleans in the 1970s and the lives that she and her two sons lead there over the next few decades.

Nguyen is an incredibly gifted writer. There were many parts of this book where I was struck by the beauty of the prose. It's also not easy to write convincingly from the perspective of a young child, and Nguyen manages to do this with graceful adeptness. Although I didn't feel that we really got to know the characters that well, I loved the overall narrative and eagerly look forward to Nguyen's next book.

Kattia

Sabrina Crispyn

Named one of the “Fifteen Books to Watch for in May” by The New York Times “Nguyen’s narrative strikes a very elusive balance: vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting — enchanting, really — in its intimacy.” —Bryan Washington, The New York Times Book Review A stunning debut novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped. When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father. But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity--as individuals and as a family--threatens to tear them apart, un­til disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

Things We Lost to the Water A Novel