Scan barcode
berniengu's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
tegan91kj's review against another edition
Really hard to concentrate as an audio. Maybe might be better in the hard copy.
gbatts's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
archytas's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
"...if the loss of connection, of country, constituted my consciousness – I could hardly know that, could I? There is no position outside such a loss from which I can view myself. Perhaps you could say instead that the place I have been imagining is constituted by that loss, and that is why my imagined place is so different to my grandfather’s, or my grandmother’s: we are reading from different founding documents. Which would be why my Anam – for that is what it is, isn’t it? – was unrecognisable, until now, as a version of Anam at all."
Throughout this novel, our unnamed protagonist is struggling to write a novel about his grandfather, a former political prisoner in Vietnam. What is expected of him is understood - a clean story of suffering and survival, in which grandfather and grandson are tied together by trauma, culture and migration. But our protagonist is unable to write this book, he is lost in a maelstrom of uncertainty, plagued by philosophical wanderings, distracted by questions of imagination, creation and remembrance. and so instead of this neatly packaged story we know how to process, we get Anam - a long, often beautiful, sometimes baffling, meander on What it All Means, which explores more than concludes.
I realised partway through I was strangely irritated that this has been packaged as a novel and not creative non-fiction. Not because I assume it is all true - many things are clearly fictionalised. Rather I think it was because Anam doesn't provide - or didn't for me - the distance you expect from a novel between reader and author. You are uncomfortably in dialogue with Dao through this book, shedding to a cobweb the pretence that this is all about an imagined state. But discomfort is not always a bad thing, and one of Dao's abiding fascinations is how important imagined states are to us. The Anam of the title is an imagined state, a homeland that inspires sacrifice and aggression but never exists in a realised state. Similarly, our protagonist knows he is supposed - in both his human rights law pursuits and his writing - to focus on practical, concrete studies, but is instead fascinated by how our past shapes our imaginings, and by how ellipses - forgettings accidental and not so much, the lapses in communication over generations - shapes our sense of the past. Catholicism, with its ritualised remembrances and fascination with veiled meaning, threads it way through the novel, joining Derrida, Arente and Vietnamese philosopher Tran Đức Thảo.
As our protagonist wanders around Cambridge thinking, he receives voice mails from a former client in Manus. With little left to say, this young man simply records the sounds of his everyday life in one of the loveliest parts of the novel, exquisitely illustrating the ineffable nature of the connection. It is also grounds our protagonist as a character who may think too much, but for whom doing is the way to find meaning.
"Mostly, I tried to say, I did the human rights work because I could not imagine doing anything else – because when I tried to do other things they felt hollow and unimportant, unreal – and that helping a client, even if I was not really helping, even if I was just patiently explaining that no help was possible, that all there was to do was to wait without expectation for change – even then, that felt real, that felt solid – or at least, more real than anything else. And that’s what those fragments meant for me too, I tried to say, they gave me something to hold on to. Tiny handholds on an otherwise sheer cliff face. Which is why I carried those fragments around with me, even when I was no longer working on them."
It is these moments that stop this being lost in its own sense of direction paralysis. Dao explores nooks and crannies, but he has something to show us about each. Dialogues are often sharp and challenging (there is a particularly powerful exchange around christening, faith and choice, for example, and a laugh out loud moment when a besieged professor comments on a proposed thesis on a Vietnamese postcolonial philosopher's views on imagination and history with "I'm just not sure what relevance this has to International law" before depressingly siezing on a reference to Fanon to suggest ths as a refocus "he's quite well known". The other rich anchor in Anam are the portraits of love - including the bond between our protogonist and his lonely wife, who is largely trapped in a flat with a baby in a town she knows no-one in, while he is supposed to be furthering his career. It is the depth of her longing for home that first triggers him to realise the absence of a sense of home for him, the core of his drift, and it is her very pratical and clearly expressed needs that ground him in turn.
But the heart of this novel (still don't think it is really a novel) is the love between grandparents and grandson. There is a lot of ideas in this book, but whether they come or go, are right or wrong, the deep love between this family stays. Whatever is lost or irreconcilable, this love remains. And that, in the end, is something to stand on.
Throughout this novel, our unnamed protagonist is struggling to write a novel about his grandfather, a former political prisoner in Vietnam. What is expected of him is understood - a clean story of suffering and survival, in which grandfather and grandson are tied together by trauma, culture and migration. But our protagonist is unable to write this book, he is lost in a maelstrom of uncertainty, plagued by philosophical wanderings, distracted by questions of imagination, creation and remembrance. and so instead of this neatly packaged story we know how to process, we get Anam - a long, often beautiful, sometimes baffling, meander on What it All Means, which explores more than concludes.
I realised partway through I was strangely irritated that this has been packaged as a novel and not creative non-fiction. Not because I assume it is all true - many things are clearly fictionalised. Rather I think it was because Anam doesn't provide - or didn't for me - the distance you expect from a novel between reader and author. You are uncomfortably in dialogue with Dao through this book, shedding to a cobweb the pretence that this is all about an imagined state. But discomfort is not always a bad thing, and one of Dao's abiding fascinations is how important imagined states are to us. The Anam of the title is an imagined state, a homeland that inspires sacrifice and aggression but never exists in a realised state. Similarly, our protagonist knows he is supposed - in both his human rights law pursuits and his writing - to focus on practical, concrete studies, but is instead fascinated by how our past shapes our imaginings, and by how ellipses - forgettings accidental and not so much, the lapses in communication over generations - shapes our sense of the past. Catholicism, with its ritualised remembrances and fascination with veiled meaning, threads it way through the novel, joining Derrida, Arente and Vietnamese philosopher Tran Đức Thảo.
As our protagonist wanders around Cambridge thinking, he receives voice mails from a former client in Manus. With little left to say, this young man simply records the sounds of his everyday life in one of the loveliest parts of the novel, exquisitely illustrating the ineffable nature of the connection. It is also grounds our protagonist as a character who may think too much, but for whom doing is the way to find meaning.
"Mostly, I tried to say, I did the human rights work because I could not imagine doing anything else – because when I tried to do other things they felt hollow and unimportant, unreal – and that helping a client, even if I was not really helping, even if I was just patiently explaining that no help was possible, that all there was to do was to wait without expectation for change – even then, that felt real, that felt solid – or at least, more real than anything else. And that’s what those fragments meant for me too, I tried to say, they gave me something to hold on to. Tiny handholds on an otherwise sheer cliff face. Which is why I carried those fragments around with me, even when I was no longer working on them."
It is these moments that stop this being lost in its own sense of direction paralysis. Dao explores nooks and crannies, but he has something to show us about each. Dialogues are often sharp and challenging (there is a particularly powerful exchange around christening, faith and choice, for example, and a laugh out loud moment when a besieged professor comments on a proposed thesis on a Vietnamese postcolonial philosopher's views on imagination and history with "I'm just not sure what relevance this has to International law" before depressingly siezing on a reference to Fanon to suggest ths as a refocus "he's quite well known". The other rich anchor in Anam are the portraits of love - including the bond between our protogonist and his lonely wife, who is largely trapped in a flat with a baby in a town she knows no-one in, while he is supposed to be furthering his career. It is the depth of her longing for home that first triggers him to realise the absence of a sense of home for him, the core of his drift, and it is her very pratical and clearly expressed needs that ground him in turn.
But the heart of this novel (still don't think it is really a novel) is the love between grandparents and grandson. There is a lot of ideas in this book, but whether they come or go, are right or wrong, the deep love between this family stays. Whatever is lost or irreconcilable, this love remains. And that, in the end, is something to stand on.
thuhufa's review
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
beehan__'s review against another edition
informative
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
kate66's review against another edition
3.0
3.5
So I've read a few other reviews now I've finished because I did wonder if I'd missed something vital. But as I read the acknowledgements section is see that Dao has written and re-written this short book for the past 10 years and perhaps that's why I struggled with it.
We have a mix of family history, country history, essay, philosophy, theory, memoir and contemplation all thrown together in no particular order. There seemed to be a fair amount of repetition and I think that's possibly what finally gave me the headache.
Perhaps what I really wanted was a more formal history of Vietnam or the boat people or the Manus asylum seekers - all of which Dao is eminently able to describe. Maybe I just wanted something more linear rather than the bouncing about forwards, backwards and sideways that I got.
People who have a personal connection with Vietnam would probably find this book interesting.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance review copy.
So I've read a few other reviews now I've finished because I did wonder if I'd missed something vital. But as I read the acknowledgements section is see that Dao has written and re-written this short book for the past 10 years and perhaps that's why I struggled with it.
We have a mix of family history, country history, essay, philosophy, theory, memoir and contemplation all thrown together in no particular order. There seemed to be a fair amount of repetition and I think that's possibly what finally gave me the headache.
Perhaps what I really wanted was a more formal history of Vietnam or the boat people or the Manus asylum seekers - all of which Dao is eminently able to describe. Maybe I just wanted something more linear rather than the bouncing about forwards, backwards and sideways that I got.
People who have a personal connection with Vietnam would probably find this book interesting.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance review copy.
orestesfasting's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
I confess that I found this desperately self-indulgent. The unknowability of the past and of lost identity is something that so much great literature has been written on, and Anam for me just lacked any nuance. It dwelt, and the fact that it was aware of its dwelling didn’t make it any better as a book, only more self conscious. Not good enough to be either academia or fiction, it tries to straddle the two. Not for me.
antonsk's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
I really wanted to like this but I found it hard to stay engaged in the story.
chroniclesofrosie's review
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0