The Sympathizer

I'm not entirely sure how to review this one. It's a war story. A refugee story. A spy novel. A Hollywood story. It does not revel in violence, but it also doesn't shy away from telling about the violence of war (and as such, take this as your content warning): napalm, gang rape, torture, murder, dismemberment through landmines and other remnants of war, “re-education” of those who were subversives against the communists.

Most of the book is about the narrator's time in America, after a wild escape from Vietnam towards the end of the war, when the Americans were trying to pull out but the communists were still trying to take back their country. The writing was excellent, with great use of metaphor. I liked the main character, even though you know from the beginning that he's a double agent. It was interesting to live in his head for a while, especially because he felt so much guilt about so much of the stuff that he did.

It was a really interesting read, and different than anything else I've read about Vietnam or the Vietnam War.

I realized about a third of the way in why this wasn't totally landing for me. Despite the author's clear talent, the major device of this book is that the double-agent narrator is in a re-education camp, writing and re-writing his confession until the Commandant of the camp is satisfied with his story. Because of this, big chunks felt like telling instead of showing? Which I suppose was necessary for the device to work. I couldn't figure out why, 100+ pages in, it still felt like I'd barely cracked into the story, but I think that's it.