18 Jan / The Committed by Việt Thanh Nguyễn [in Booklist]
Six years since his first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize, Việt Thanh Nguyễn is back with the much-anticipated second installment in a planned trilogy. Here, the same unreliable narrator adds another few hundred pages to the already 367-page confession he keeps in the false bottom of his leather duffel. Our anti-hero manages to record his French exploits since living in Paris with his blood-brother Bon, convincing whoever asks that he’s in France to experience his (priest-who-impregnated-his-teen-housekeeper) father’s homeland.
At 37, he has survived senseless war, double spying for both the Communists and the CIA, tortuous reeducation, and refugee camps, to land on the couch of an aunt who isn’t his relative, while working in an Asian restaurant with less-than-toothsome fare and supplying intellectuals with mind-altering substances. Working for the Boss almost gets him killed, but the retaliatory violence just leaves him feeling highly conflicted.
Undeniably erudite and culturally fluent as ever – interweaving history, philosophy, political treatise, theology, even literary criticism – Nguyễn effortlessly enhances the story with snarky commentary, sly judgments, and plenty of wink-wink-nod-nod posturing to entertain committed readers.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, January 1 & 15, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021