Publisher Description
The perfect complement to the exquisitely wrought novels Ru and Mãn, Canada Reads winner Kim Thúy returns with Vi, exploring the lives, loves and struggles of Vietnamese refugees as they reinvent themselves in new lands.
The daughter of an enterprising mother and a wealthy, spoiled father who never had to grow up, Vi was the youngest of their four children and the only girl. They gave her a name that meant "precious, tiny one," destined to be cosseted and protected, the family's little treasure.
But the Vietnam War destroys life as they've known it. Vi, along with her mother and brothers, manages to escape--but her father stays behind, leaving a painful void as the rest of the family must make a new life for themselves in Canada.
While her family puts down roots, life has different plans for Vi. Taken under the wing of Hà, a worldly family friend, and her diplomat lover, Vi tests personal boundaries and crosses international ones, letting the winds of life buffet her. From Saigon to Montreal, from Suzhou to Boston to the fall of the Berlin Wall, she is witness to the immensity of geography, the intricate fabric of humanity, the complexity of love, the infinite possibilities before her. Ever the quiet observer, somehow Vi must find a way to finally take her place in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rendered in spare vignettes, Kim's lyrical debut novel is an autobiographical impression of motherhood and exile. Forced to flee their privileged, intellectual life in Communist Saigon, Nguyen An Tinh (an "extension" of her almost identically named mother and a stand-in for Th y), born during the Tet offensive, navigates the Gulf of Siam bound for a Malaysian refugee camp, where she and her family live for several months before making their way to Canada. There, Nguyen is blinded by the whiteness of the snow and the blankness of her slate. But her new home quickly makes its marks she learns French and English, what to wear in the harsh Quebecois winters, and the ways in which the American dream extends its reach around the globe. The narrative wanders through time as Nguyen mourns her autistic son's inability to say maman, recalls her childhood in Vietnam, and muses on the fork in her family tree that her life in the West represents. But like the married men Nguyen prefers, whose "ring fingers with their histories keep me remote, aloof, in the shadows," the disjointed narrative keeps readers at a distance, allowing tender glimpses of Nguyen's pain, but never fully exposing her.
