Play Book Tag discussion

It seems unfair to judge a novel by the author’s own criteria – but having read and admired Nothing Ever Dies, I couldn’t help doing so here, and it soars. The novel wraps up many of Nguyen’s compelling arguments from his non-fiction exploration of the memory of war in a far more digestible package of satire and pitch-black humour. The central character’s divided loyalties allow an even-handed portrayal of the key theme (common to both books) of recognizing inhumanity as well as humanity on both (all?) sides of the conflict. The issue of who decides how wars are remembered is also explored here, through a film-making section in which the central character works as a consultant on “an epic about white men saving good yellow people from bad yellow people”. (Of course, some of the more far-fetched anecdotes – like the presence on set of corpses supplied by a bodysnatcher – are taken straight from the actual shooting of Apocalypse Now.)

This book is viciously witty, entertaining, brutal, and important – I loved it.