Dust Child

Written By Linda Malek

Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Reviewed by Linda
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Thank you @oneworldpublications for this copy!

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has quickly become an auto-read author for me. It's rare to find an author who creates fully fleshed-out characters with beautiful descriptions of food, places, people, tradition, and feelings but Nguyễn does this so effortlessly that I found myself dreaming of a Vietnam I've never even visited! In the author's note, Nguyễn says "I wrote this book to offer my prayers for a world where there is more compassion, more peace, more forgiveness and healing," and it is clear that the writing of this book is intentional in its message of redemption, healing, and awareness. I envy those of you who get to read this for the first time, I was torn between devouring it in one sitting and wanting to savour the words for longer.

The author pays tribute to the Amerasians of her home country, the Dust Children who were born to American soldiers and Vietnamese women, and the multitudes who were displaced and ostracised by society as a result.
Dust Child presents us with 3 parallel families and perspectives which are intertwined following the Vietnam War around 1969.

Trang and her sister Quýnh leave their parents and the rice fields of the Kiên Giang province and travel 155 miles to Saigon to earn money at the Hollywood Bar. Phong is half-Vietnamese and half-Black, orphaned, and trying to get a visa to the US. Dan is a US army veteran, returning to Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon) for the first time since he left the country in 1970.

There is no sugarcoating when it comes to describing the horrors of the war, especially when writing the POV of the veteran whose actions caused irreversible damage. The moment the characters' worlds collide isn't a moment of explosive drama but more a gradual seeking of forgiveness and peace and you will be invested in each journey right until the last page. This is an important story that deserves all the praise it's going to get and I can't wait for more people to read it!

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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