Helpful Score: 1
If this wasn't a book group selection, I would have ditched it after the first chapter. As it was, I texted several quotes to one of the members who hadn't yet started the book, including parts of the paragraph below and the barge/slug simile in my fifth paragraph.
Starting at the bottom of page 1 in my edition: "His daughter sat beside his bed. She was taller than an average-size man, though her shoulders and waist were slender. Her eyes were as dark as walnuts. Her hair, a comparable color, was unkempt and rife with wide curls. Her face was thin like the rest of her. After thirty-one years of wear, the contours of her forehead and cheeks had been infiltrated by faint wrinkles. At first glance she might have appeared awkward, but when she leaned forward to adjust his blankets, her movements were graceful."
And so Iris is introduced, one of several protagonists in the story. As her father dies later in the scene (the prologue), she promises to travel to Vietnam to open the center for street children that he's been working to set up. Oh, and this wrinkly old man-woman? She's not a farmer's daughter, a'workin' out in the sun all day. She's a book reviewer, who lives by herself in an apartment that is described as part college professor's office (living room) and part monk's cell. We are told again and again how hurt and rejected she's felt because of her absent Vietnam-vet father.
In the first chapter, a woman shows up at Iris's door as she prepares for her trip to Vietnam. Allow me to paraphrase, "It is I, your former neighbor who you haven't seen in many years. Alas, my son, who was madly in love with you when you were children, had just come back from Iraq missing part of his leg and most of his heart. He drinks all day and I can't watch him die. I have heard through my mysterious connections that you are going to Vietnam, and I had this great idea. You can take him with you!" And so Noah is introduced to the story.
Now we are whisked to Vietnam where we see a new day dawn on Saigon, where "the barges fought the currents like slugs making their way up a brown leaf."
And this is where I would have stopped, if not for the book group policy of reading at least 50 pages. So I read the next two chapters and things improved enough that I read the entire book.
By "things improved," I don't mean that the descriptions were any less inane or the dialogue any less stilted (enough with the ellipses already!) or false-sounding. I don't mean that Shors started showing instead of telling what was going on inside the characters, because he tells us again and again and again how angry Noah is, along with how Iris and other characters feel, and yet I don't feel like I really know any of the characters. They never become more than one dimensional. And I don't mean that the plot rises above the sappy, sentimental puddle where it wallows. What I mean by "things improved" is that the story moves to Vietnam. If this story was not set in Vietnam, a country that Shors seems to know and love, I would not have continued to read after page 50.
A pair of homeless children are the other element that makes this book bearable. Mai is a little chatterbox who knows how to work people. Minh is a mute, Connect-Four whiz, missing a hand (which of course gives him a connection to Noah). Of course, they are unshakably loyal to each other. Mai's epithets for Minh and her use of phrases like "sure, sure" made me laugh, but when she waxes philosophical about their role as street children, she doesn't sound like a 10-year-old girl, educated or not.
The bad guy is irredeemably bad (although there is some explanation given for how he became that way), emotional manipulation is rampant, and after a very close call with a convenient save, there are happy endings for all. If that's how you like your books, you might enjoy this one. It was not, however, a cup of my tea.
Starting at the bottom of page 1 in my edition: "His daughter sat beside his bed. She was taller than an average-size man, though her shoulders and waist were slender. Her eyes were as dark as walnuts. Her hair, a comparable color, was unkempt and rife with wide curls. Her face was thin like the rest of her. After thirty-one years of wear, the contours of her forehead and cheeks had been infiltrated by faint wrinkles. At first glance she might have appeared awkward, but when she leaned forward to adjust his blankets, her movements were graceful."
And so Iris is introduced, one of several protagonists in the story. As her father dies later in the scene (the prologue), she promises to travel to Vietnam to open the center for street children that he's been working to set up. Oh, and this wrinkly old man-woman? She's not a farmer's daughter, a'workin' out in the sun all day. She's a book reviewer, who lives by herself in an apartment that is described as part college professor's office (living room) and part monk's cell. We are told again and again how hurt and rejected she's felt because of her absent Vietnam-vet father.
In the first chapter, a woman shows up at Iris's door as she prepares for her trip to Vietnam. Allow me to paraphrase, "It is I, your former neighbor who you haven't seen in many years. Alas, my son, who was madly in love with you when you were children, had just come back from Iraq missing part of his leg and most of his heart. He drinks all day and I can't watch him die. I have heard through my mysterious connections that you are going to Vietnam, and I had this great idea. You can take him with you!" And so Noah is introduced to the story.
Now we are whisked to Vietnam where we see a new day dawn on Saigon, where "the barges fought the currents like slugs making their way up a brown leaf."
And this is where I would have stopped, if not for the book group policy of reading at least 50 pages. So I read the next two chapters and things improved enough that I read the entire book.
By "things improved," I don't mean that the descriptions were any less inane or the dialogue any less stilted (enough with the ellipses already!) or false-sounding. I don't mean that Shors started showing instead of telling what was going on inside the characters, because he tells us again and again and again how angry Noah is, along with how Iris and other characters feel, and yet I don't feel like I really know any of the characters. They never become more than one dimensional. And I don't mean that the plot rises above the sappy, sentimental puddle where it wallows. What I mean by "things improved" is that the story moves to Vietnam. If this story was not set in Vietnam, a country that Shors seems to know and love, I would not have continued to read after page 50.
A pair of homeless children are the other element that makes this book bearable. Mai is a little chatterbox who knows how to work people. Minh is a mute, Connect-Four whiz, missing a hand (which of course gives him a connection to Noah). Of course, they are unshakably loyal to each other. Mai's epithets for Minh and her use of phrases like "sure, sure" made me laugh, but when she waxes philosophical about their role as street children, she doesn't sound like a 10-year-old girl, educated or not.
The bad guy is irredeemably bad (although there is some explanation given for how he became that way), emotional manipulation is rampant, and after a very close call with a convenient save, there are happy endings for all. If that's how you like your books, you might enjoy this one. It was not, however, a cup of my tea.
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