I would recommend reading The Sympathizer before moving onto The Committed.

I was alternately dazzled and frustrated by this book. I loved the descriptions of Paris and the left-wing intellectuals, the humour and darkness of the criminal world the narrator finds himself in, the portrayal of the Vietnamese diaspora and the contradictions thrown up by their feud with a French-Algerian gang. At the heart of it is the narrator's continuing struggle with his identity - neither French nor Vietnamese, his loyalties stretched in every direction. There's also the conflict between political ideals and personal experience. (The reading list supplied by the author at the end threw me back to my days as a politics undergraduate.)

The frustration was that at times the stream of consciousness becomes repetitive, the stories of his childhood, his confused identity and the way every event is seen through that prism. At one point he starts referring to himself as 'we' which confused me further still.

Overall, though, I admire the ambition and the dark humour of the writing.

I DFN this book at about 20%. It was not a genre in which I could get into, but I tried because I heard good things. I have listed a low star rating based on my feelings, but I think many would enjoy this.

I had been hearing about Viet Thanh Nguyen's Sympathizer for years now all over GoodReads. In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel we meet an unnamed Captain who is working as a spy for the Viet Cong. Our sympathizer describes himself as being "of two minds". The son of a French priest and a young Vietnamese servant girl he feels that he can see issues from both a Eurpean and an Asian perspective. His unusual gift make him a good spy in that he is able to really place himself in his subject's shoes. He can wrap himself around their minds. Unfortunately it iis also a curse because he also feels what they feel. Throughout the series he is haunted by those he assassinates. Their incessant whispers inform his actions.

Together The Sympathizer and The Committed serve as his confession. While exposing his guilt they further examine politics identity and representation. The Sympathizer is set in the US in a detention center. The Committed takes place after he has been "reeducated" . Both times he is fleeing from war and its horrible aftershocks. In both countries he must deal with their special brand of racism. He is never healed and his "remedy" may be more aggravating than it is palliative.

Nguyen's writing style is sardonic and cerebral. I was blown away by The Sympathizer. Although the writing in The Committed was just as stellar I found that I had a harder time emotionally connecting to the book. When I was away from the book I did not feel pressed to pick it back up. But once I started reading again I couldn't help but be impressed by Nguyen's words. Perhaps the problem lies in my having more knowledge of American history and culture? So maybe I had a better grasp on the cultural references and could understand Nguyen's critique better? I honestly don't know. Maybe I need to do a reread of The Committed at a later time.

Overall, this series is thought-provoking and challenges us to look at our role in global politics and war.It is about colonialism and memory of bad acts. Whose voices get heard and what stories get told. In these books no one is a winner and all share guilt. But what Nguyen offers is a perspective we have not heard before in a voice that is intelligent and compelling.

I really enjoyed The Sympathizer, but something didn’t click for me in The Committed. In the first book, the social commentary was weaved into the story, but it’s a lot more in-your-face here. Some parts felt like I was reading an essay with a bit of fiction thrown in for good measure. It was still interesting, of course, but not the reading experience I expected.

I did go into this one with a little bit of apprehension, since I was satisfied with the first one’s ending, even if it was a little hazy. I thought the build-up was powerful. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a follow-up, and I have to say, it did hold up in general. It just wasn’t as memorable a reading experience for me.

Also, there were some weird moments? There’s this one time when two women tell him about Simone de Beauvoir and Hélène Cixous, and then he goes to a brothel and asks for a sex worker and gives her head... Feminism! That’s not exactly how it happened but, like, almost. And also later, comparing a woman to a book and saying you “opened her”...

Overall, I still liked it, and I’m excited for the last book of the trilogy.

I am so glad I am done with this book.

The language is honest and beautiful, the story is there, but I was struggling most of the time. Drug dealers, gangsters and underworld figures discussing ideologies under the influence. The bodyguard of a brothel quoting Sartre and Camus. How real is that? The protagonist referring himself as "you", then as "we" and "I". This whole book was too confusing and difficult to digest to me.

I wanted to like it, Pulitzer Prize winner author and all that - but I didn't.

Very beautiful language.

"we all become accustomed to the aroma of our contradictions".

Prose in poetry.

You can spend time on the sentences and learn a great deal of what experience has been condensed into those lines.

I have read the first book in this series, The Sympathizer, and so was looking forward to this book. Written in a postmodern style where the narrator jumps from place to place and topic to topic, it is a little difficult to follow at times. But, having read the first book, it made more sense.
Nguyen is an amazing writer. He references many other authors, particularly philosophers, again making the book difficult to understand if you don't know all of these references (I do not). He also uses language in an engaging way with hefty use of alliteration and word play. I read this book on the netgalley app, so was not able to underline or highlight particular passages where I felt he did an amazing job, but I would have probably highlighted hundreds of passages if I had been given the chance.
Several other reviews I have read of this book mentioned the torture and mayhem as a major theme throughout the book. I would agree with this and am not sure if so much violence is needed here.
I think what stuck with me the most was his reference to what it is like being a refugee in France, along with the references to being a refugee in America (mostly from the previous book). Especially in this day of Asian violence in the US, this is particularly potent and important for us white folks to take into our consciousness.
I can't say I really enjoyed this book, as it was hard to read, but I found it meaningful and informative and will look forward to reading the third installment of this series.

Excited to include this much-anticipated follow-up in the March edition of Novel Encounters, my monthly column on the top fiction ahead for Zed Books, Zoomer magazine’s writers and reading vertical (full review at at link).

I was excited about this book because I really enjoyed The Sympathizer, but maybe enjoying that first book made my expectations a little too high for this one. The writing is still fantastic - Viet Thanh Nguyen is incredible - but for some reason, I just couldn't really immerse myself in this sequel the way I could the first.

Even having read The Sympathizer, it was clear that there was so much more to this captivating and divisive protagonist than was presented in the novel. This sequel to Nguyen's book is one that I will be thinking about it for a long time. I think it would be amazing to spend an entire semester to teach just those two novels.

As good as the first one...or probably better. I LOVE that this voice, uncompromisingly challenging toward colonizer premises and beliefs, has been celebrated by (descendants of) the colonizers. I LOVE that.

This took me a while to get through but the time spent was well worth it. Funnier and more biting than The Sympathizer, but just as violent. I love Nguyen's broad perspectives and lessons on a post-colonial world.

The Committed is the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer. It is not a stand alone novel and picks up right after the events in The Sympathizer. Well written novel with exquisite cultural insights of the French, Americans and Vietnamese. Mr. Nguyen soars when he compares cultures and his insights are biting. His words sing.

This is not my typical genre but thought I would try it out due to the popular reviews! Overall was well written and interesting to read.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for providing an arc copy to review!

In a TV Interview, Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen explained that he grew up feeling like a spy as an American in a Vietnamese household and as a Vietnamese in the American community. He calls himself a refuge rather than an immigrant. The Committed draws on that attitude and experience as he tells the tale of a refugee to France in the 1980s making a new life surrounded by political aspirants, drug dealers, and rivaling friends.
Quality of the writing and setting of the stage comes in the prologue, “We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves. Less than nothing, we also saw nothing as we crouched blindly in the unlit belly of our ark, 159 of us sweating in a space not meant for us mammals but for the fish of the sea.” One would think that safety would come with reaching land, but more trouble comes for this refugee who says he is a man of two faces as he tries to adapt to the French culture and only runs into more and more danger. Those two minds keep him torn as well. This is a book not to be rushed through but to be read thoughtfully.

Hede: A winning combination: 8 books for March from Rick DeStefanis, John J. Jacobson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Harlan Coben, Dan Gutman, Iain Lawrence, Angeline Boulley and Jess Phoenix

There are about 200,000 books published each year in the United States alone. To pare that down a bit, Mountain Times is spotlighting eight titles — fiction, young adult and nonfiction — that are worthy of attention and are now available in March.

Fiction

‘Rawlins: Last Ride to Montana’ by Rick DeStefanis, The Word Hunter Books, $23.95

The Memphis, Tenn.-native Rick DeStefanis, a former paratrooper with the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, is a master of military fiction who has lived most of his life in northern Mississippi — all information that gives no indication of just how well his Western historical fictional ‘Rawlins’ trilogy is written and received.

DeStefanis introduces the young Tennessean Virgil Rawlins against the backdrop of the Civil War and the American West in “Rawlins, No Longer Young.” Through that introduction, we learn of Rawlins’ own code of honor, of meeting Sarah McCaskey and most importantly, of his unique ability to question his own touchstones. It is in this novel that Rawlins learns that defining his future begins with the decision between being an outlaw or a lawman, with shades of gray and blue both tinting the choice.

In “Rawlins, Into Montana: Even Paradise has its price,” the former Confederate soldier and Sarah agree to lead a wagon train of 20 families along the Oregon Trail and into the Montana Territory. While many of the adventurers are on a quest for gold, Rawlins and his wife are setting out for Paradise Valley, aptly named for its natural beauty but antithesis to the dangers that threaten their peace, family and land.

The segue from that novel fits perfectly into “Rawlins, Last Ride to Montana.” Hoping for a reconciliation with Sarah’s family in the East, the Rawlins set out from Paradise Valley with their children. By this time, Virgil’s fighting skills, gained on the battlefield and during his time as a Pacific Railroad policeman, have become legendary. But during the few times when legend is not enough to deter attackers, we learn of Sarah’s strength: “Rawlins felt Sarah’s presence when she stepped up close behind him in the doorway and pressed a revolver into the hand behind his back. That was his Sarah. She was that kind of woman. She saw things through the same prism as he did — one of frontier survival.”

Developing dual storylines in this final novel of the three — Virgil and Sarah separate for much of the story, he driving cattle and she attempting familial fence-mending — DeStefanis presents enough realistic adventures and scene building to ensure this novel has room on your bookshelf next to Louis L’Amour. And although “Last Ride to Montana” is a continuation novel with enough exposition to leave you satisfied, if you’ve got the space, add the first two books as well.

‘All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone’ by John J. Jacobson, Blackstone Publishing, $27.99

Continuing along the Old West trail for a moment, new this month is John J. Jacobson’s “All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone,” a late-1880s story with a 2021 motif.

Jacobson’s novel is the most quixotic cowboy story you’re likely to ever read. And just like that storied tale, this one is funny, adventurous and most of all, timely.

“All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone” is a man-out-of-time story. Texan Lincoln Smith is living at the turn of the 20th century, a time when the Old West is rapidly fading, much to the chagrin of the young man who fashions himself as the last true cowboy — even channeling a Johnny Cash who won’t be born for nearly 40 years as the story opens: “His mother wouldn’t let him take his .22 caliber rifle out by himself until he turned twelve, three long months from now.”

Old beyond his years, Lincoln longs to live a chivalric code from a time when men such as his Texas Ranger father righted wrongs with nobility. And true to those roots, when as a young man his heart is broken and he is expelled from Dartmouth for nearly blowing up the school — and after serving for a time in the only stint a “true” cowboy at that time could achieve: traveling in a second-tier Wild West show (“Bronco Buck Burke’s Wild West and Tranquility Show wasn’t a first-line outfit like Buffalo Bill’s,” the narrator explains) — he decides there is no recourse but to do what all romantically challenged men must do: join the foreign legion.

Weaned on dime novels, Lincoln’s grasp of what the foreign legion will be like rivals Cervantes’ creation, and from there the story becomes pure fun. Meeting up with a couple of American treasure seekers also planning to enlist, he travels toward exotic lands, meeting, fighting and mentoring with his anachronistic tendencies in tow. Armed with his father’s keepsake Winchester, he encounters Crocodile cults, desert hermits and enough adventure and derring-do for a lifetime — both his and ours.

Even given the story’s early 20th century setting, Jacobson has written a novel for now. Lincoln Smith is the hero today for all of those who, if not long for, certainly wax nostalgic about a time before the iPhone, the Internet and social media were ubiquitous.

‘The Committed,’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Grove Press, $27

There’s plenty of existential action — two words that aren’t often juxtaposed in books of any type — in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new novel, “The Committed.” But here we have it.

From page 1, as the man of two faces begins to describe a horrific journey fleeing to France, and page 2 with a perennial conundrum and Vonnegut-esque reply — “And it stuck us all then, the answer to humanity’s eternal question of Why? ... It was, and is, simply, why not?” — we get the early sense we’re in for cerebral ride.

And we’re right.

“The Committed” is a sequel to Nguyen’s 2016 action-filled existential Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer.” Set in the 1980s, the novels share a narrator — a half-Vietnamese, half-French Communist spy who calls himself “a man of two faces and two minds” — and a continuing story.

After the man with two minds went undercover in “The Sympathizer” as a refugee in America, he was captured and committed for re-education. Now, he arrives in Paris with his blood brother, Bon. Hooking up with the French Vietnamese woman who is declared as his “aunt,” the men set up a business dealing drugs to French intellectuals — allowing Nguyen room to bring in the ideas of revolutionaries such as Fanon, Marx and Sartre.

From there, the novel takes off, sometimes funny, sometimes brilliant and, admittedly, sometimes overwritten in scenes that work hard, as when the man with two minds becomes involved in gangster activity, uttering lines that can fall a bit flat: “You can’t torture me. … I’ve lived through a re-education camp.” Well, actually, anyone could be tortured, and the man of two faces lives on to produce a complicated story in which the reading pleasure is in unwinding the twists.

Still, this is Nguyen and themes of addiction, authoritarianism, colonialism and the like are woven masterfully into a story brimming with suspense, challenging the Sympathizer with tasks as divergent as reconciling his own inner turmoils, combatting a state-sanctioned colonial mindset and reuniting his two best friends whose world views are at polar opposites.

To date, four authors have twice won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction — Colson Whitehead joined Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike in that exclusive club in 2020 — but after reading “The Committed,” it’s clear that Nguyen could be a contender for a fifth addition. It would also be the first to win a Pulitzer for a novel and its sequel and, of course, the symmetry of Nguyen winning in 2016 and Whitehead in 2017, and Whitehead in 2020 and Nguyen in 2021 would be just about as existential as it gets.

‘Win’ by Harlan Coben, Grand Central Publishing, $29

A Coben standalone novel about Win — super rich, super handsome Windsor Horne Lockwood III, fixer friend to sports agent Myron Bolitar — has long been a fan fancy, and here it is, with the author’s 33rd novel starring the sidekick in a title story all his own.

His own it is. Win’s narrative penchant is speaking directly to the reader — a style you’ll either love or hate. Devotees of first-person stories will devour the book, and others … well, they’ll no doubt ride alone for one of Coben’s most tautly plotted thrillers to date.

Win is the uber-competent friend everyone wishes they had. He’s able to make problems disappear with the wave of his wallet or a flash of his phone, and if a date to a beach house via helicopter is on your bucket list, he’s the guy that’ll loan you all three.

But here, Coben’s “Win” is more complicated in several ways than in the author’s typical fare. For one, Win has his own moral compass, and is fit enough to force the needle to point toward his own True North. What makes him either a smartass or a badass, depending on your own view, is that he doesn’t really care what you think, and tells you just that. So, it’s not that those who’ll find him intolerable aren’t in on the gag, they just don’t like the brand of humor.

But in this novel, Win’s voice is perfect for a story that involves a rediscovered Vermeer that had been stolen from the Lockwood estate, an ancient suitcase of the narrator’s that’s discovered in the apartment of a dead subversive from the 1960s and a cousin who was one of 10 young women abducted and taken to the “hut of horrors” for just about every unimaginable horror a woman could be forced to endure.

Through money, no small amount of intelligence and a lot of muscle, Win sets out to unravel these riddles, driven by the ever-present need to keep the family name unsullied and his own sense of social justice just as clear.

Clear also is Win’s voice to the last page, when the facade breaks just a crack as we witness the one — the only — thing he cares for beyond himself: his “biological daughter.” Yet true to form, he closes the crack just as quickly, sending the reader off with vintage Win narrating the black and white of his worldview: “When my daughter turns and looks at me, all those grays suddenly vanish in the bright of her smile. For perhaps the first time in my life, I only see the white. Am I being hackneyed? Perhaps. But since when have I cared what you thought?” Badass, indeed.

Young adult fiction

‘Houdini and Me’ by Dan Gutman, Holiday House, $16.99

Dan Gutman has authored more than 150 books, with about a dozen of those either nonfiction or written for adults. The rest he writes for children, tweens and teens, and based on the success of his “My Weird School” series, he gets the way kids think. But better, he get the ways kids learn.

There’s a lot to learn in his odd and inviting “Houdini and Me,” and the author pays considerable attention to details in his honest storytelling. As Gutman writes in an afterword, “everything in this book is true, except for the stuff I made up.”

Kids, and adults enlightened enough to pick up a YA title, will learn in this book a lot about the famed magician Harry Houdini (including his real name and how he performed some of his most iconic tricks), a lot about New York City during both the early 20th century and today (including incredibly accurate physical details — Gutman lives eight blocks from the house on 113th Street where Houdini lived; an inspiration for the story) and a lot about loyalty, friendship, bullying and facing your fears (the foundation of YA and really well-written adult novels).

You’ll also learn about some things that aren’t exactly or fully in the undeniably true camp, spirituality chief among them.

Gutman’s story is tied to a vintage cell phone and Houdini’s ability to communicate from the dead on it with 11-year-old Harry Mancini. The author does make clear in “Facts & Fictions” at the end of the book that his story has limits — “you cannot communicate with dead people by text message. Don’t bother trying” — but the prospect is intriguing. If Houdini could communicate from the afterworld, what would he want?

The answer to that is nothing less than to perform his best escape act ever — coming back from the dead by exchanging places with a young boy from the future. Harry Mancini is that boy, and although the storyline reads implausibly on the surface, the deal is that both would get something from a temporary exchange — young Harry a chance to experience the life of a worldwide celebrity and Houdini the chance to make good on his famous boast that could he cheat death, he would somehow find a way. The moral dilemmas presented make for engaging and thought-provoking reading.

‘Deadman’s Castle’ by Iain Lawrence, Margaret Ferguson Books, $17.99

Combine the name Igor and a title with the word castle and you’re likely to come up with something a la “Frankenstein.” But Iain Lawrence’s “Deadman’s Castle” is much creepier than that.

Six years before the story opens, Igor Watson’s father “saw someone do a terrible thing.” Since then, the family has been on the run, changing towns and homes through a witness protection program run by the Protectors whenever the Lizard Man — the boogeyman, so named because of a tattoo, who did the terrible thing — catches up with them. It could be days or years until the family has to move and the uncertainty is now wearing on 12-year-old “Igor,” his latest alias and one of so many that he can’t remember them all.

Approaching his teen years, Igor finally talks his father and mother into letting him attend school, something he hasn’t done since kindergarten. With his cover story intact, Igor begins to experience all that a public education has to offer — making friends, bullying, classes and homework included — but soon realizes that his parents’ web of rules (curtains closed, be home before dark, don’t travel further than a certain street and continually lie about his background) aren’t going to work if he wants to make friends on any real level. Worse, their new town is the only one of the dozens that he’s lived in that somehow feels like home, with an unaccustomed unfamiliarity about it, and he doesn’t want to have to move again.

The closer Igor gets to making serious friendships, the more his story starts to slip. And, the longer they stay in the town, the more he begins to doubt his father’s sanity. After all, only his father has ever seen the Lizard Man.

Lawrence develops this story with real suspense, real problems and the very real concerns of any pre-teen — especially one whose life is built on a series of lies that if unleashed could threaten his family’s safety. The “creepy” factor — Is there really a Lizard Man, and, if not, why would his father, a former college professor, make up not only that, but the story about the Protectors and force his family to move and start anew time and again with his mother complicit in the scam? — is well developed, and it is only through the power of friendship and honesty that the action is resolved.

“Deadman’s Castle” is not your typical YA fare — probably because Iain Lawrence is not a typical YA author, having himself lived in 11 different homes and attended nine different schools before high school — and middle readers will love it. Every young teen at some time questions parental authority and rules, and in “Deadman’s Castle,” Lawrence has tapped into an instinct for rebellion that will universally appeal.

‘Firekeeper’s Daughter’ by Angeline Boulley, Henry Holt and Co., $18.99

Angeline Boulley’s debut novel “Firekeeper’s Daughter” is one the most beautiful books, in substance and production, that you’ll find among YA readers — and it’s also one of the most important.

The Anishinaabe author began writing the novel a decade ago with the idea of creating an “indigenous Nancy Drew” character — crafting a story with people and settings that reflected her cultural upbringing. And, because storytelling is central to the Anishinaabe way, a novel springing from “an Ojibwa girl with a Native dad and non-Native mom” makes sense.

In “Firekeeper’s Daughter,” Boulley accomplishes this and more.

The story centers on 18-year-old Daunis Fountaine, a teenager who loves her life but wants more — she longs to be an official part of the Sault tribe. Originally planning on leaving home for college, Daunis changes her mind after her uncle dies from an overdose and her grandmother has a stroke.

She then decides to enroll at a school near her Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., home. Battling complex familial challenges — her Anishinaable father is deceased — she soon becomes involved in challenges outside of the family. When her best friend is murdered by a boyfriend who is addicted to meth, she begins to explore the pervasive drug overdoses infiltrating the Ojibwa reservation and uses her education in chemistry and native plants to go undercover for the FBI to help source the seller. As the story develops, Daunis becomes increasingly concerned that her investigation will expose more than a drug dealer — opening truths to old scars that could threaten to sunder the community she loves.

Tightly plotted with taut suspense and meaningful characters, there is little wonder that “Firekeeper’s Daughter” has been adapted by Netflix for TV and plucked for many YA book clubs. Exploring what it means to be an Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman), making stands on issues of citizenship, language and drug use within Native communities are important topics that are addressed with skill and sensitivity.

Some advice: Read the book before you see the story on television. Boulley’s storyline will be well-adapted to the small screen, but the crisp characters and the nuances and subtleness of her language and writing could only be fully appreciated in novel form.

Nonfiction

‘Ms. Adventure: My wild explorations in science, lava, and life’ by Jess Phoenix, Timber Press, $24.95

The best nonfiction reads like fiction, and that’s certainly true of Jess Phoenix’s “Ms. Adventure: My wild explorations in science, lava, and life.” And when you lead a life as exciting as that of an extreme explorer, scientist, volcanologist and cofounder of the environmental scientific research organization Blueprint Earth, it’s certain that any book of those adventures would read like a thriller.

Yet here it’s all true, and Phoenix’s message that “exploration and science are our birthrights as humans” is soundly and thrillingly shared.

Like authors of the best fiction, Phoenix is a skilled writer and gifted storyteller with a startlingly ability to weave telling details into her narrative. It’s no wonder that she is so often tapped to speak at national forums — her life is her story, and the passion she feels for her profession and the climes she studies are captured with infectious enthusiasm on each page.

Geologists and explorers alike will thrill in some of the career highlights Phoenix shares — teasing ancient secrets from rock specimens, harrowing high-altitude treks into the Andes’ Nevada Salkantay, enduring a bout of appendicitis on Hawaii’s Mt. Kilauea and railing against a media establishment that sometimes works to sensationalize her sex above her profession (as when she is asked by a TV crew to fake a fall so that she could be “rescued” by a male team member) among those.

Other stories detail more inner journeys, such as her acceptance into the Explorers Club — the international professional society that works to advance field research and “reserve the instinct to explore” — but are no less stimulating. “Ms. Adventure” transcends stereotypes in important ways, and is sure to excite a new generation of adventurers.

This is the second book in a series (admittedly I have not read the first book); however, I thought that I might enjoy this book based on the description: A former Vietnamese communist spy finds himself in Paris believing in nothing and resorting to drug dealing.

This book fell felt and disconnected, soulless. It was similar to reading Nick - the main character observing without any feelings - and also the chaos and disorganization of Catch-22. Most of the time, I didn't know where the novel was heading (and not in a good way). Perhaps it was the formatting, but there were missing quotation marks so I could not always tell if someone was talking. The main character spoke about some heartbreaking events, but they were described so high level that it wasn't emotionally riveting. For example, if you read an article about how 3 million people died that isn't particularly uplifting but you go about your day. Now, you read about one girl who was found on the side of the road and you hear about her life story and that she was on her way to a dance performance, most readers have a response. This was written more like the 3 million people article.

Additionally, one of the reasons that I picked up this book is because I wanted to learn a bit more about the philosophies mentioned in this book. However, some of the events were mentioned very briefly and then moved on so I still didn't learn anything additional.

Overall, this book just wasn't for me. As mentioned earlier, if you enjoy books where the main characters is very aloof, this might be one you enjoy.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

"The Sympathizer" is one of my favorite books of recent years, so the bar was set high for Viet Thanh Nguyen's sequel, "The Committed," which finds our unnamed narrator involved with drugs and gangsters in 1980s Paris. And for the first third or so of "The Committed," I was certain that it would be even better than its predecessor. We're propelled into the novel by the stunning prologue, which picks up exactly where "The Sympathizer" left off (even down to the first person plural narration) on a perilously overcrowded refugee boat heading out to the open seas. Having been part of its human cargo and eventually finding his way safely to Paris, our narrator from "The Sympathizer," who now calls himself "Vo Danh," (which means "nameless," as a joke on French immigration), is as entertaining as ever in his new environment, as he ponders everything from "capitalism and its dancing partner, colonialism" to the absurdity of being a man "who had a screw loose, the trusty screw that had, for years, held together my two minds." There's lots of action, intellectual wordplay, the re-introduction of the narrator's blood brother Bon and the rapid introduction of a vibrant new supporting cast of characters, in every sense of the word. But this page-turning beginning eventually bogs down a bit, and the book suffers from the same slightly rambling ending that I felt was "The Sympathizer"'s one flaw. Having said that, there's a lot to not just like but love about this book, and I ultimately embraced it, flaws and all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review. I'll definitely be reading Nguyen's planned final installment.

At one point in this book, Viet Thanh Nguyen -- enumerating ways in which his country has made France, or the French, better --= says that the banh mi was an advancement of the heavenly French baguette. Now, I'm an admirer of the banh mi, but this assertion is an inaccurate comparison -- as well as being wrong. You can say the banh mi is an improvement on a pork hoagie or sub or grinder, but not the loaf itself. It would be like saying a reuben is an improvement on classic Jewish rye. So why all this bread sammie digression? Because The Committed is not an improvement on The Sympathizer, the author's prize-winning, poignant predecessor. With all it's fillings and dressings, The Committed is messy to consume and difficult to digest. There are some flavorful bits, particularly in the first half of the book, but I felt jaded by the over-seasoned second course.
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An Essay in Fiction

This novel is, at its core, an essay on the impacts and ills of colonialism, capitalism and war. The difference: in lieu of the traditional forms of evidence that a nonfiction essay requires (case studies, statistics, and the like), it uses its plot line. Hence, scenes are frequently peppered with citational moments where characters from editors to bouncers recommend theorists to the protagonist and those theorists thus enhance his thoughts and subsequently, the argument of the essay.

Even though the books makes a point to call attention to feminist theory, there is no nuanced description of women throughout the novel. Women are either sexy secretaries-turned-gun wielding manipulators or they are sex symbols or plot conveniences. The novel fails the Bechdel test but more importantly, it does so with a certain level of self-awareness. For a novel that displays an extraordinary adeptness at craft, the macro-level issues of (female) characterization are a real disappointment.

This would make a good read for lovers of heavy theory and deep intellectual engagement. And for all its flaws, the book really does have talent at work at the sentence level. From pages-long sentences to perfectly broken rules of syntax, Viet Thanh Nguyen displays here a mastery of the English language.