Then it would be; was the language easily beautiful, fluent, sparkling? Was I always reading sentences and paragraphs twice like circling around to keep a memorable vista in view; even at the risk of delaying the momentum of my journey?
And did I come away richer for the insights into us all that I was introduced to, or lead around, or shamed into during the course of the storytelling?
I believe I was swallowed by all three as I read The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen; and I thoroughly enjoyed being consumed.
The protagonist is, he confesses, someone who sees both sides of the issues. That he is an cross-culture illegitimate son, that he straddles the political and military chaos of the Vietnam War as an embedded spy, and that his loyalties and demons are at war throughout the book torque his moral compass between east and west, north and south.
The storytelling is spot-on, slicing through the duplicitous layers of U.S. deceit, Vietnamese corruption, and Vietcong idealism with a voice as cutting and remorseless as Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut, but with that tang of levity that smiles even as it cries.
And the words are beautiful. Effortless. Devastating. Beautiful. They needed to be; to tell such a wrenching a story where an individual spirit struggles to survive.
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