This fiction debut comprises moving short stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea. In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam — and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test, while in "Meeting Elise" an aging New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut.
"...the final story, "The Boat", about a Vietnamese refugee in a boat carrying twice its capacity, surrounded by other refugees, and sickness, and storms. It is the harrowing highlight in a book full of them."
Not an easy book to read there is a sadness at the core of Le's work. If there is a theme running through The Boat, it is that we only realise the real value of our relationships when it is too late to save them, and that living and dying is ultimately a solitary endeavour. Almost all the stories are, one way or another, about the end of life, and the central characters emerge empowered, if disillusioned.
Australian Book Review, Louise Swinn, July 2008
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