The Sympathizer
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer for Fiction. I respect the book and appreciate that Nguyen gave a voice to a Vietnamese American point of view while shitting on America's shittiness in Vietnam. The narrator is half-French, half-Vietnamese. He grows up in Vietnam but spends a large portion of his adult life studying in America. He is secretly a communist agent in disguise as a Vietnamese army captain working with America to democratize Vietnam. This info is on the back of the book; if it wasn’t, I’d be lost from the get-go.
The narrators’ contradictory identities are disorienting for the reader-- and I’m sure that’s the point since the narrator is disoriented himself. Regardless of intention, the result-- for me, at least-- was that I read almost 400 pages of someone’s voice and still have no idea where his allegiances truly lie. He seemed to have convictions, but I couldn’t identify them. I wasn’t invested in the narrator enough, because I didn’t really know him at all. So, when things happened to him, I found it hard to care. I didn’t have an emotional connection to him. I usually dig an unreliable narrator (hello, Slaughterhouse-Five, I love you), but this dude bored me, which surprised me since it’s touted as a spy novel of sorts.
There were several moments when I wasn’t enjoying an aspect of the book and thought to myself, well, that’s probably the point. I think the last 80 pages are total gibberish. I didn’t enjoy reading that portion at all, but I think that’s the objective because the narrator is also not enjoying himself. Maybe I’m overemphasizing my “enjoyment” as a reader and underemphasizing Nguyen’s achievements covering controversial topics (Vietnam war, responsibilities towards refugees, communism vs. democracy, etc). My takeaway: The Sympathizer is more suitable for a classroom setting. Intellectually, it has much to offer, but no, I did not enjoy reading the book. The Sympathizer receives 2 out of 5 flames.
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