Feb 23, 2016 | 288 Pages
“Haunting and beautiful. . . . A deft mix of folklore, magical realism and stories of struggle.” —Los Angeles Times
“Fascinating. . . . [A] deeply affecting novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Possesses the poetic heft of Jayne Anne Phillips’s Lark and Termite and a rawness that is somehow beautiful, as in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.” —The Boston Globe
“The great beauty of Quan Barry’s novel is in its transcendence . . . its attention to all the stories, whose sum is not darkness but light, not death but life.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Lyrical, luminous, and suspenseful. . . . Rendered with shocking clarity and pathos on the page. . . . This is a Vietnam of myriad faces, myriad aspects, beautiful and terrible all at once.” —Jesmyn Ward, National Book Award-winning author of Salvage the Bones
“Magnificent. . . . With a deep sensory intelligence that grounds the characters in their landscape and a prose style that elevates their lives into myth, this is not only a good or moving or surprising book but an essential one.” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
“Barry’s absorbing debut paints a vivid, complex portrait of a land and an era that often elude American understanding.” —Marie Claire
“Mesmerizing. . . . [Barry] writes with stunning language, which carries the novel and elevates moments of heartbreak, despair, and perseverance.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fierce, stunning, and devastating. Readers haunted by . . . Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, and Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain will revel in it.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“An evocative and haunting exploration of Vietnam’s painful past.” —Booklist
“Beautiful, transporting. . . . A mesmerizing vista of Vietnam’s recent past. . . . Pays resonant tribute to the uncounted dead below the surface of a convulsed nation.” —Kirkus Reviews
