The Sympathizer by by Viet Thanh Nguyen

 Sunday, Apr. 21, 2024--San Antonio

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize among other prizes and forms of recognition.  I read about the new HBO series based on the novel and decided to read the book rather than watch the series.  It's fictional, yet each aspect of it matches descriptions of real events.  The book takes place toward the end of the Vietnam War and afterward.  The main character is a young man who is the son of a Vietnamese woman and a Frenchman who is a priest.  In the book he is a young adult who has gotten a college education in the USA and during the Vietnam war is working within the military intelligence operation as the assistant to a General while being sympathetic to the communist cause; therefore he is operating as an embedded spy.  The book is many stories tied together, though.  It's a story of discrimination since the young man is never completely accepted--is always an outlier--not considered to be a true Vietnamese nor a true westerner.  It's also the story of the war, the story of the end of the war and the harried escape, the story of being an immigrant in America, the story of what happened in Vietnam after the war, the story of the American Vietnamese immigrants wanting to retake their country, the story of the reeducation camps in Vietnam (like those that exist in all other communist countries) to break the resistance of former enemies and to keep the citizens in line--even those who fought for communism.  It is also the story of formed family since events throughout the book are built around the shared stories of 3 friends who became "blood brothers" when young and have tried to support and protect each other all their lives.  And as serious as all this sounds, there are points in this novel that are among the funniest I have ever read.  (I'll never forget what the 13-year old discovered as he stuck his fingers into a raw squid and what he eventually did!)  It's a good book which I read with up-and-down interest because it is essentially so many stories tied together as one.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjai-Brenyah

 Sunday, Apr. 14, 2024--San Antonio

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjai-Brenyah, a finalist for the National Book Award, takes place in the near future of the United States.  The title is the name of the hottest new reality show which has taken the interest of the nation by storm.  It features prisoners voluntarily sign up for the show which requires them to fight each other to the death for a chance of prison release if they can keep winning for three years.  Different prisons around the name have their own representatives forming a "chain" in competition with the other chains.  The big stadium battles are always between members of different chains, but to keep the public's interest and introduce surprises, chains are followed regularly.  (Think Big Brother-type shows.) Technology has advanced so that there are no hidden cameras; instead, there are spinning orbs used zoom in, out and around to broadcast what is happening at any moment both during battles and outside of battles.  To add surprise actions, there are activities such as hiking/camping trips by individual chains through wilderness areas giving members a chance to turn on and kill other members of their on chain.  Most prisoners who participate die within a matter of 2-3 weeks.  There is a hierarchy of titles and privileges plus stardom to be gained the longer a prisoner stays alive.  Unlike the Hunger Games which occurred after changes in the type of national government and living conditions within the country, Chain Gang All Stars seems closer to possibly coming true since it is not so much of a stretch from what we already see in today's reality shows.  And there is the added question of why those watching as people kill each other are exhilarated.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5. 

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Saturday, Apr. 6, 2024--San Antonio

I quit reading Possession by A. S. Byatt at the 33% point even though it was a winner of the Booker Prize.  I feel it won that award because of the complexity of the story rather than for being a good story to read.  I actually quit reading at the 4% point and moved on to another book which I finished in less than 3 days.  So far, after going back to this book to see if I could stay with it, I have wasted a total of about 10 days to get only 1/3 of the way through it, and I have no interest in continuing.  The basic story of the researchers who have discovered missing letters between two authors from decades ago is interesting, especially since the two authors they have spent so many years researching have been considered to be minor poets with unique, but not very interesting contributions to literature.  (In this respect, I think the author may have been trying to criticize the narrow niches that university scholars claim as their topics of specialization.) But the author has inserted so much of these "not very interesting" poems the authors created which contributes to the book boring.  Plus the letters the poets have written to each other are mostly boring to read due to so many references to each other's writings as well as the writings of historically significant authors/philosophers in history.  Only a person who wants to go through 500+ pages that resemble a puzzle to be solved and either know the classics of literature well or want to wade through them to understand references made to them would enjoy this novel.  Anyone else completing it could have only kept pushing through to be able to say they read it.  I gave it 2 stars out of 5 and am glad to leave it behind me.