Books Set in Asia: Vietnam

Build Your House Around My Body, by Violet Kupersmith (2021)

 

This novel defies description.  The novel mainly focuses on Winnie, a young Vietnamese-American woman, who moved to Saigon ostensibly to teach English and to connect with her Vietnamese heritage.  She is very unhappy and drowns herself in beer and sex.  We know from the first page that she will disappear without a trace.

 

The novel seamless moves from the present to the past and back again, through French colonization to the Japanese coup in the 1940s, with brief references to the Vietnamese War.  We meet a marvelous assortment of odd characters, from a Khmer-French schoolboy who was left in a rubber plantation in the 1940s, to the Fortune Teller, to the brothers Tan and Long, to the young Binh, who disappeared decades before Winnie. Interwove through these characters is the supernatural and superstitions inherent in rural Vietnamese culture.

 

The author slowly peels away the layers, and slowly the connections between all these characters becomes evident.

 

This book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I absolutely loved it.

 

Read:  January b28, 2023

 

5 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Cambodia

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung (2000)

 

Loung Ung was 5 years old when her world was upended by the Khmer Rouge.  She had been living a care-free childhood in an upper-middle class family in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with her parents and six siblings.  Her father was a government official, but when the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government, his life was in jeopardy if his work status was discovered.  In April 1975, the family had to leave Phnom Penh, hide their identity, and live as peasant farmers.  Eventually, they were captured and sent to forced-labor camps where they were given very little food.

 

This memoir is told through the eyes of Loung Ung, who was a child during this period of Cambodian history.  She describes the horrors of being separated from her family, how the Khmer soldiers can for her father, and he was never seen again.  She describes how starvation and malnutrition stole the life of her younger sister.  She describes how she, as a 7-year-old, was recruited into the Khmer as a child soldier.  She lived through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, and in 1979, was finally able to reunite with what remained of her family.  It is harrowing to imaging young children living through and being exposed to such hatred and horror.

 

Read: January 21, 2023

 

4 Stars

 

 

 

Books Set in the World: Unnamed city and country

The Maid, by Nita Prose (2022)

 

Molly Gray is a maid in a fancy hotel.  She takes pride in her work and lives to return hotel rooms to a “state of perfection”.  The novel is written in first person with Molly as the narrator.  She knows that she sees the world differently from others.  Her deceased grandmother has taught her how to interact with others.

 

She has few friends but takes people at face value.  She finds Rodney, the hotel’s bar tender, to be dreamy. When he sets a time to meet with her about a particular matter, she thinks she is on a date.  She is also friendly with Mr. Preston, the doorman, and Juan Manuel, the dishwasher.  Mr. Preston seems to care about Molly and, knowing that she perceives the world differently from most people, tries to warn her that not everyone has her best interest at heart.

 

One day, Molly goes in to clean a room only to find Mr. Charles Black, a very important and repeat guest in the hotel, dead on the bed.  Molly follows protocol and calls reception to report the death.  She takes careful note of the room but is unable to read the people involved in the investigation.  Soon, she finds herself as the prime suspect.  She knows she didn’t commit the murder and wants to clear her name.

 

The Maid is an absolutely delightful novel.

 

 Read:  January 15, 2023

5 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States, Washington, D.C.

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: The Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (2016)

In 2000, an informant provided the FBI with a package that contained a sample of confidential documents and pages of codes that, once deciphered, indicated that the writer was offering to sell United States top secret documents.  A clue as to the identity of the letter’s writer was the fact that many words were misspelled.  After an exhaustive search, the FBI identified the writer as Brian P. Regan, a disgruntled security specialist with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), who, realizing that he wasn’t getting a promotion, decided to supplement his income by selling classified intelligence to foreign countries.  His first target was Libya, before moving on to Iraq and China.

The author explored Regan’s childhood.  He was from a working-class family and was a bit of an odd duck.  In school, he was often the butt of jokes.  He learned early on that cheating helped him move on with his life.  By cheating on the entrance exams, he enlisted in the military as a non-commissioned officer.  He had a talent for cracking codes, which landed him a job with the NRO.

After marrying and beginning a family, he soon found himself heavily in debt.  Hence, his scheme to sell America’s secrets to foreign powers.  For this amateur, this proved to be more difficult than he imagined.  He copied numerous top secret and confidential papers and buried them throughout federal properties.  He encrypted the location of these papers with a complex code.  These buried documents were to provide him with insurance in the event that he was ever caught.

Regan sent numerous coded letters to foreign powers with the offer to sell secrets, but none of his contact took his bait.

The author provided a brief history on code and encryption, dating back thousands of years.

This was a fascinating book and a true-life thriller.

Read:  January 13, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe: France

The Women of Chateau Lafayette, by Stephanie Dray (2021)

Read: January 10, 2023

3 Stars