Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
CONSUMMATE READER BRINGS SISTERS' STORY TO LIFE, 26 Jul 2009
Alice H. Kennedy who read Nguyen's acclaimed memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner gives equally appealing voice to Short Girls, the author's first foray into fiction. Born in Saigon Kennedy's voice is distinct, clear and easily segues between characters. A slightly more strident tone identifies older sister Van, and a lighter sound captures Linny.
The two girls are not close, perhaps unsurprising since they are so different. Van is a law school graduate whose world abruptly changed after 9/11. First, there is a professional failure when she cannot prevent the deportation of a client, next she suffers a miscarraige, and then the final blow - her husband leaves, simply walks away.
Linny, on the other hand is a college dropout who happily works at You Did It Dinners where Moms can come for prepared dinners to freeze. She's a fashionista, devoted to designer duds and all things trendy. But lfe is not rosy for Linny either. Her romance with a married man is headed directly for where most of those arrangements go - nowhere.
Each could use a sister's shoulder to cry one but they've been estranged for so long. Then they receive a call from their father, Dinh Luong, a man obsessed by the thought that all Americans are tall while those of Vietnamese heritage are short. In attempts to combat what he considers to be a serious drawback he has invented the Luong Arm, which is intended to help the vertically deprived reach objects which would ordinarily be too high for them to reach. Unfortunately his invention has never caught on.
Nonetheless, after 28 years he has decided to become an American citizen in the hope that this will help him sell the Luong Arm. He's the last of his friends to give up his green card and he calls his daughters to come home and celebrate the occasion. Upon arrival they find that they're not only there to celebrate but also to plan the festivities.
That's not the only surprise that awaits as the two sisters at first reluctantly then slowly begin to discover each other, and find they have more in common than either had ever dreamed.
- Gail Cooke
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, 6 Nov 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I really loved this book, the characterisation of the two sisters Linny and Van is so real; Linny, the youngest, is spoilt and wild, whilst Van, is quiet and bookish. As different as they think they are, their lives have many parallels - from their equally disterous relationships to their distant relationship with their father, Din Luoing, Vietnamese immigrant who is about to take American citizenship after 28 years in the country. The girls are called back home to celebrate in true Vietnamese style and in the process begin to discover that they are not so different after all.
If you like Amy Tan's style of writing you will love this; highly recommended.
|
|
|
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice enough, but bland and slightly dull, 29 Oct 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
It's fair to say that if I hadn't needed to review this novel for Amazon Vine, I probably wouldn't have bothered to finish it. It's perfectly inoffensive, but lacks any real drive. The main characters are Linny and Van, sisters born just a year apart to Vietnemese refugees. Each takes a different route to assimilation into American culture - Linny becoming "the pretty one", never short of a date but wary of dating Asian-American men, and Van by becoming "the clever one", becoming a lawyer and gaining a middle-class Chinese-American husband along the way. The only real thing Van and Linny have in common is their widowed father, who is stubborn, irascible, and reluctant to fully integrate into American society. For all the sisters' supposed differences, they are not strongly drawn. The chapters flip between their two voices, yet I would often find myself thinking, "who am I reading about here, again?" Although some life-changing events do happen to Van and Linny, I didn't experience any real sense of tension or drama; I simply wasn't caught up in their lives and felt like an observer, rather than living through the novel with them.
|
|
|
|
by Shappi Khorsandi
by Claudia Pineiro
by Rosie Alison
by Mari Strachan
by Anne Berry
