Short Girls: A Novel
A novel about Vietnamese-American sisters, family, immigration, and the gaps in self-understanding. Its quiet tension never fully lets go.
Work Information
The distance between sisters becomes a family story.
The sisters’ estrangement intersects with the memory of the Vietnamese-American community that shaped them. Love, marriage, and second-generation uncertainty are drawn with care.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Viking Adult
- Published
- 2009-07-23
- Pages
- 304 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.99 x 2.51 x 21.84 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780670020812
- ISBN-10
- 0670020818
- Price
- 8126 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
A mesmerizing novel about estranged sisters and the cultural and family history that binds them Van and Linny Luong are as baffling to each other as their parents' Vietnamese legacy is to them both. Van, the quintessential overachiever, has applied the same studied diligence to her law career and marriage-a beau idéal that vaporized when Mr. Right walked out. Linny-pretty, fashionable, untethered-is grasping for purpose when her affair with a married man takes a humiliating turn. Each is the last person her sister would call, but when Mr. Luong summons them home for his American citizenship party, Van and Linny find themselves communing about their past-their late mother, their father's obsession with his Luong Arm invention, even the irony of their romantic straits. As these unlikely confidantes chart the uncertainty that defines them, they forge a tentative new relationship and the wherewithal to overcome disappointment. Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "a writer to watch, a tremendous talent," Nguyen recasts her gifts marvelously in this first novel, infusing it with humor, compassion, and insight into siblings, aging parents, and the desires and ambitions that drive us.
Bich Minh Nguyen [Bit Min Nwin] is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner . She teaches at Purdue University.
Reviews
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This is the second book and first novel by this fine Vietnamese-American writer. While the immigrant experience in America is certainly a part of the book, it is more about the choices we make in life, the importance of family, the rivalry between two sisters, and – most of all – how we can turn failures into something more by learning what we truly want. Sisters Van and Linny couldn’t be less alike. Van is an immigration lawyer in Michigan married to a handsome 4th-generation Chinese-American lawyer. Linny didn’t care about education and helps run an upscale food preparation business in Chicago. When their Vietnamese-immigrant father calls them to come home to Grand Rapids to help celebrate his upcoming American citizenship, the sisters haven’t had a real conversation for years. But they are each hiding a failure that they can’t tell their father. Their father has his own failures. He has spent his life working construction jobs while trying to become an inventor of products for short people. He might have good ideas but with poor English skills and no sales ability, it seems that no one will pay attention. This has Nguyen’s fine writing, as in her other books, and excellent characters that you will recognize, probably in your own mirror.
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In einfachen Worten des Englischen eine erfrischende Auffrischung der Englischkenntnisse in einer netten Geschichte der vietnamesischen Auswanderer in die USA
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I really enjoyed this book. It showed the POVs of two sisters, giving us slices of both their lives and showing us their thinking behind their actions, so we could empathize with both of them, even when they didn't get along. Very well-written, and I felt the characters were pretty life-like.
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Gave an insight into immigrants moving to America and settling in. Their daughters were two very different people learning to live as Americans with Vietnamese parents. They became closer while looking after their father.
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The book came in good condition and I cannot wait to read it.