Review of The Boat by Nam Le - Book Report/Review Example

?Review of “The Boat” by Nam Le The boat is a collection of short stories by Nam Le, which emotionally resonate, excite and which are strongly written; moreover, it represents awesome range of talent and extraordinary depth of feeling. The collection is appetizingly diverse with its seven narratives set in diverse locations that include Manhattan, Iowa City, shanties of Colombia, Coastal Australia, Hiroshima, Iran and South China Sea. Moreover, the characters are diverse as well ranging from a Japanese third-grader to an aging painter to even an American woman visiting an Iranian friend for the first time in Tehran. The first story in the collection overwhelms with its power of experience as well as its ideas and is one of Le’s successes in the collection. The story regards a writer named Nam grappling with whether to use the father’s account on surviving My Lai as well as North Vietnamese prison camps in a creative writing assignment. The story is ideal and delicate on the questions surrounding Immigrants or ethnicity on what is essential in authenticity, exploitation and personal narrative. The story invigorates the discussion on these issues and manages to excite the reader; hence, the story is good at addressing these issues though it dapples the other stories with its own shade as one reads the other collection in search of another story like it (LE, 2009). Nam’s father in the opening story of the compilation is a bonanza of background as recorded when Nam recaps a scene of his childhood. The overt silkiness is Le’s most appealing features in the collection with each story being in its own way rounded and clear and astoundingly lively. Le in the collection show his ability to control characters through the environments even though he seem s not to only influence them directly by his setting thus, manages to provoke their response without seemingly manipulating them . The opening story offers a multifaceted life to the story of a father, who was deeply entangled with his ethnic history and son who seems ambivalent regarding his relation to the story. Le in the opening narrative deals with the vague boundaries linking reality and fiction by instituting the narrator as ‘Nam’ who was a student and appeared identical to the author. A colleague in Nam’ workshop reminds the narrator that the story, which in this case is the opening story, consisted of the old verities that Faulkner advocated young writers to focus on. The colleague admires Nam for the work on stead of exploiting the Vietnamese theme in the fiction and the narrator proceeds write an ethnic story in an attempt to recount his father’s horrific experiences after surviving the My Lai massacre. This story as well as the frame story that contained it and the other six stories in the collection offers strong evidence that the convenient way of conveying universal human qualities is through an individual and his or her particulars (LE, 2009). The book’s closing story ‘The Boat’ is an ethnic Vietnamese tale regarding the harrowing voyage in which people in the boat suffer the squalid conditions like surviving the terrifying storm then almost die from thirst before they finally reach land. Protagonists in the other five narratives include; 14-year-old Colombian assassin, an Australian teenager, 8-year-old Japanese girl residing in Hiroshima, sick, elderly New York artist, as well as an American attorney visiting an Iranian friend in Tehran. Among the touching stories of loss and pain, the unforgettable and heartrending story in the collection is “Halflead Bay”, which is rare because of its sensitive and emphatic treatment of adolescent, making the story remarkable as the main character is shy and inarticulate. On a profound level, the story concerns the way Jamie and his young brother struggle with the understanding their mother is dying from multiple sclerosis. Moreover, as though the passing of their mother is not painful enough, the beautiful bay they live in, which offered the family good living for generations was also dying from overfishing and was losing its port traffic to the nearby Maroomba. The narrative is principally impressive owing to its opulently poetic Australian vernacular (LE, 2009). In ‘Cartagena’, a tale of gripping adolescent friendship, allegiance and crime where a 14-year-old assassin named Juan Pablo from Medellin was ordered to kill his best friend. After failing to execute the order, he is summoned by his agent, a meeting that most likely would end in the death of the 14-year-old. Through the capable hands of Le and his masterful treatment the material resulted in a rich and rendering story which became complex at every turn. Reading the collection of stories by Le, one is left sensing that the author has travelled across the globe and pokes everything with a prickly stick. The author in “Meeting Elise” depicts the ill and well-regarded painter getting ready to see his daughter in a long period. The narration ranges from being comic to pathetic, which draws the world vividly; but, the most remarkable thing regarding the story is the way the author juggles the dialogue, memory and physical sense of the elderly man’s ailing body to create a continuous, seamless an convincing thought. Le’s characters seem to be individuals on transit, for one reason or another all of them appear to be trying to find their way to safety and stability. The author defies the desire to explain the characters away; thus, inhabits them with intuitive understanding, which is unfeasible to teach (LE, 2009). In conclusion, Le writes in outstanding variety of tones, voices and style, which is clear that a person may not necessarily beware that he or she is reading. The reader basically disappears into characters and lives developed by Le, be it the 14-year-old hit man depicted in Colombia in “Cartagena” or even the elderly New York painter getting prepared to see his daughter in “Meeting Elise”. The author pulls the feat off through tragicomic influence in “Meeting Elise” where the passing away painter meets his 18-year old daughter for the first time. The last story in the compilation focuses on physical and psychological trials experienced by Vietnamese refugees hovering in a small boat, where their supplies were exhausted and hoping to reach the land. The narrative offers a fervent depiction of endurance, sacrifice and adoration that appears revelatory and wise. Reference LE, N., 2009 The boat. Camberwell, Vic, Penguin Books. Read More