On the one hand, it was interesting to learn about a place and time unfamiliar to me, yet I found the main character so distasteful I came close to bailing halfway. How do we judge the survivors of a world filled with political peril? It takes a knack for manipulation to emerge alive.

Cho Lon is one of my favorite areas in HCMC today, so I was eager to pick this book up when I saw the premise. I didn’t think I could like a book while hating the main character, but here we are. Lam does a great job at bringing the city and time to life, and liked all the characters except Percy. That man was such an example of failing upwards.

Originally posted on Cozy Up With A Good Read

I was happy to get to read this book. I absolutely love Canadian books and authors. I was really interested to read something by Vincent Lam (never have before) and see how he can add all this into a story and base it around the Vietnam war. I can tell you that this was definitely a beautiful story!

I found this book difficult in the beginning, but I pushed through and am really happy I stuck with it because as the story went on I found myself really invested in everything that was happening. Vincent Lam takes a lot of the beginning of the book to have his readers understand Percival, he goes into his history a bit to show what he has already been through. That was the part I had a few issues getting through, the book went back and forth between Percival's past and the present time of the story without actually mentioning that (each chapter goes back and forth). Though I did enjoy that Vincent invests a lot of the beginning of the book into the history of the main character because it has the readers understand his situation more, and why he does some of the things he does.

I enjoyed how the book was broken up into different parts. Each part of the story represented a new part in Percival's life. It was a good way to break the book up and it really shows when the important events are happening. Vincent Lam also has a way with words, his descriptions throughout the book are beautiful and bring everything to life for the reader.

I really enjoyed connecting with Percival's character, I found myself being more invested in the story in the second half. There was a lot more drama happening and I found I was seeing more of Percival's emotions later on. He was a very interesting character for me throughout the book. It seemed that Percival was ignorant of the events around him (or pretended to be ignorant). It was interesting to see how the Vietnam war really affected the story, I was not expecting it to revolve so much around the war, but I found many instances where the war helped decide the outcome of an event in Percival's life.

The love story was very interesting for me. I found it different than other love stories that I have previously read. The hardships the characters go through are much different, and the way the characters deal with these were interesting. I was very surprised at how things were wrapped up at the end. This story definitely pulls you in and keeps you invested in reading to find out what happens next.

Vincent Lam brings a beautiful story to life in ugly times of war. This story makes you think about your life and how you would do things if you were in that position. Pick this book up, it is definitely great Canadian literature!

This book made me so tense! Many of the books I read, I know how it's going to end - not the actual ending, but that the protagonist will still be alive, or that everything will be resolved. With this book, I had no sense of where it was going, so I was on edge. Especially with the gambling - money issues always make me very nervous. It made the book very hard to put down.

Beyond that, I loved reading about daily life in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It made me want to read more about the history of that region.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to. Percival Chen is a highly flawed character: sexist, racist, and an authoritarian parent. And yet I found myself liking him more as the book went on, in large part because he's not entirely stuck in his ways, and events cause him to reassess his beliefs and values. I agree with some other reviewers that the book gets off to a slow start, but given that most Western readers know next to nothing about the Vietnam war (outside of the American experience as portrayed in movies), it takes a while to set the scene.