It's true that, in Vietnamese, we rarely say I love you, and when we do, it is almost always in English. Care and love, for us, are pronounced clearest through service: plucking white hairs, pressing yourself on your son to absorb a plane's turbulence and, therefore, his fear. Or now—as Lan called to me, "Little Dog, get over here and help me help your mother." And we knelt on each side of you, rolling out the hardened cords in your upper arms, then down to your wrists, your fingers. For a moment almost too brief to matter, this made sense—that three people on the floor connected to each other by touch, made something like the word family.
Beautiful prose, no doubt. But for a personal story, I felt like the writing was way too flashy. Maybe it’s my personal preference, but I like books that can be raw and vulnerable without having to use so much grandeur in its prose. And it just felt really disjointed and felt like a compilation of short stories instead of a novel. I really tried to like this and give it more stars, but I just didn’t have the heart to. I liked some passages, but the book as a whole honestly didn’t really move me.