An amazing novel that details the experience of Vietnamese immigrants in New Orleans. It is also an excellent family saga as the characters struggle both with their new land and continuing to be connected as a family. The writing and the storytelling are truly impressive. I found myself emotionally invested in this novel and all the characters. I could not wait to pick this book up and reconnect with the story. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this novel. I don't know a lot about Vietnamese immigration during the Vietnam War and what life was like for them after coming to America. I found it fascinating how they all had very different lives and experiences in New Orleans and where they ended up during Hurricane Katrina which was one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit America. I was expecting more of a focus on the events during Katrina but it was barely mentioned. It was more a tale of coming of age and how they adapted to living in New Orleans and the loss of a father and a husband.

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle into life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she copes with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memory and imagination. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong takes up with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity--as individuals and as a family--threatens to tear them apart. But then disaster strikes the city they now call home, and they must find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

This book offered a unique approach to a time and population that was relatively unknown to me. To read of the plight of a Vietnamese family as they fled post-war Communism and arrived in New Orleans in the early 70's was eye opening. The differing points of view provided a well-rounded approach to the story.

Highly recommend!! My first book to read by this author but definitely not my last!! Uniquely and beautifully written, this story and its characters stay with you long after you finish the book.

This is an underrated, completely enthralling, debut novel. I read it in 24 hrs. Nguyen's writing is beautiful and wasteful for a first-time author (or really for any author). I look forward to whatever comes next!

Eric Nguyen's debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water , is a beautifully written look at an immigrant Vietnamese family, and how their lives are shaped or reshaped by America.

Huong and her two young sons leave Vietnam in 1979 and move to New Orleans. Huong’s husband, Cong, stays in Vietnam, although she looks forward to the day they will be reunited. The book moves forward as snapshots in time, from 1979 to 2005, narrated by Huong and her sons. Huong becomes more acclimated to life in America and becomes involved with a Vietnamese car salesman

Although the structure of the novel took some getting used to, ultimately I couldn't put it down. Beautiful and heartbreaking its hard to believe this is a debut novel! I'm excited to see what else Eric Nguyen has to offer us in the future.

Thanks to netgalley and publishers for providing and e-copy for me to read and leave my honest thoughts. This book was such a joy and I'm glad I got to experience it when I did.

Things We Lost to the Water is a beautiful debut by a very talented author. It is about the Vietnamese Immigration experience told during the time of the Vietnam war.
It is a powerful family saga that shows the strength of family and community.

I did enjoy the book, just not as much as I had hoped. The beginning of the book was dragging a little for me and I felt the pacing was a bit off. However I think this is going to be a big hit.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday punlishing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A beautiful and captivating story that I'm extremely glad I was able to read. Thank you for sending!

Impressive first novel! Nguyen's novel follows a family for a quarter of a century, beginning with they leave Vietnam in the 70's and relocated in New Orleans. Most of the time, the prose is quite beautiful. The novel begins with a slower pace, allowing readers a chance to meet the young mother and her two sons, but then it speeds up a bit after the mother lets a lover join them, and the boys move on, and they tend to become more disconnected, and even though we know how many families do stop speaking to each other, for this novel, I wish they had stayed more connected so the ending wouldn't have felt quite so rushed, and the three would have had to confront what they were running from.

THINGS WE LOST TO THE FIRE by Eric Nguyen was one of my most anticipated reads lately, and it did not disappoint. Ngyuen's storytelling is captivating and his characters are memorable. I truly enjoyed Huong's story and the themes of immigration, family, belonging, and motherhood/parent child relationships. I highly recommend this novel and will eagerly await Nguyen's future work.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC, which I received in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to love this unique story but i could not move past the writing style. i found it clunky. this story has a lot to offer but it was not for me.

I always appreciate reading stories of immigrant families and seeing perspectives outside of my own to gain better understanding of how life in America can be drastically different for anyone.

This book was truly haunting and beautiful to read. I was immensely drawn to the story of this family of Vietnamese immigrants that have relocated to New Orleans to build a life together in a country where the culture is vastly different. I liked that the book was told in different characters and that you get the viewpoint of the mother and her sons. This seemed to really round it out. The main critique I have with this book is that it just seemed to glaze over subject matter instead of really diving in and grasping the story. I think that the characters really ended up feeling superficial as opposed to as rich as they would have been. The ending just seemed to come out of nowhere. I would definitely love to read more from this author. I found it amazing that this was a debut novel. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

things we lost to the water absorbed me through a single day of reading, and the world that eric nguyen occupies is rich and full of potential. some details are so hyerspecific that they feel like family stories, like the parents’ trip to da lat or their home in my tho, the viet gangs tuan grows up in and the overwhelming catholic contingency in NOLA. the choice to switch between perspectives of mother and two sons is great, too — so often we miss out on refugee parents’ inner worlds in second generation stories. small moments like huong driving an hour south to get long an from a filipino lady capture the loneliness and unexpected joy of life after resettlement. 
all that said, i think i missed out personally on the potential for each character’s arc to be more complex, and to get us a bit further than the grief of war and resettlement. i wish huong had more opportunities to be funny and joyous, not just a long-suffering mother, and that her partner vinh had more of a defined personality. binh/ben disappointed me too, as the second generation kid turned queer literary bro who excommunicates from his family and dates some white communist in paris  (not sure what this meant). while i understood that brand of resentment, i’m a little tired of it personally , and i wish we’d been offered more of a resolution.
the ending of this book reminds me a lot of jesmyn ward’s salvage the bones, which hurtles you forward into the rush of the hurricane and forces each character to decide who exactly they are. but it’s hard to do that when each character’s arc felt slightly incomplete, and they kind of wander around unfulfilled and grieving. my critique of things we lost to the water is more a matter of personal taste than craft. but when you love your characters like you love your people, you can imagine more for them than what this life might provide.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for providing me with an advanced copy of Things We Lost to the Water.
While I read the book over the course of a couple of days, I had to sit with it for a little while before reviewing it.
I still cannot decide if I liked it or not. I ended up giving it a 3 star middle of the row rating.
What I liked were the prose and the characters, and I truly cared for them, wanted to get to know them better. What I didn't like were the time jumps that kept us from really witnessing the character growth. We are being told how they were now, but we weren't shown how they got there. Overall I found the pacing to be off. Sometimes the author spent an excessive amount of time setting up a scene and describing everything in detail (maybe even too much), then suddenly we jump several years into the future as if time doesn't really matter at all. If this was an intentional plot element, then the function of it was not clear to me.
Overall I found the story intriguing enough to finish, and there we plenty of topics that would make interesting discussion points in a school setting or book club.

Considering this is debut work, I appreciate the author’s effort to highlight the post-American War struggles Vietnamese-Americans went through. But the narrative didn’t do it justice for me. All three main characters felt one-dimensional, each having seemingly only one personality trait to cling onto and to revolve their character around, therefore they lack depth. They didn’t have their own coherent plotlines to follow either, the events were just very random and didn’t significantly affect their personalities. So without a decent storyline and any rather well-built characters, I was left to be disappointed.

I don’t have issues with the author’s English writing, but his usage of foreign words and phrases kinda pissed me off. So many of these Vietnamese words felt redundant and unnecessary. They didn’t show any meaningful cultural details but many were just there for being Vietnamese words. The same goes for the French phrases. If it wasn’t for me having a decent enough knowledge of all these three languages, I would have DNF-ed it a long time ago. And most of them never came with an explanation or translation! If Eric Nguyen meant this fictional experience to be shared and to be empathized by other readers, he should’ve made it more accessible to them.

In conclusion, this was a very flawed book. But debut works usually have flaws. And I believe in Eric Nguyen to show improvement in his next projects.

initial thoughts: the writing of this debut novel is beautiful. it’s heartbreaking, real, raw, and honest. reading this novel felt like a real glimpse into what life as an immigrant is like in America, however, there was one major element missing for me: emotional connection with the characters.

the pacing of the novel had huge chunks of time missing. personally, this made it hard for me to really connect to the characters. I wanted to see more of Ben & Tuãn growing up, and more of the lives they created. I wanted to see more of how they overcame their struggles and built their life in America - and after the major ending event of the book.

overall, a beautiful debut by a very talented author. I’ll definitely be checking out Eric’s future work.

**a huge thank you to NetGalley & Penguin Randomhouse for the ARC.**

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Where were the sounds from before? Not the alarm, but the grating calls of the grackles in the trees, the whistling breeze, a car speeding past—where are they now?-4

This book was about the search for identity in a foreign land, it’s a story about loss and moving on, it’s about the Vietnamese Immigration experience told during the time of the Vietnam war, it’s about complicated relationships between a mother and her sons in a foreign land, and ultimately, about trying to stay connected to one another when circumstances in life threatens to push your family apart. It was a beautiful book.

I loved all of the challenges that we were presented with in this book. The story of why the father remained in Vietnam, the migration from Vietnam to America with two young sons, the adjustments to this new and strange environment, the growing pains as the sons go from young boys to young men. There were so many interesting challenges and themes going around this book which really fed into your hunger for a good storyline. I loved how realistic the challenges were as well. The family’s search for identity in their new environments, finding ways to somehow stay a family but also being pulled apart by different circumstances. I think a lot of immigrant parents would be able to relate to this book a lot, and 1st generation children as well! I really loved it. I have the say the water plays a big role in this book as it does in real life too. People being separated by the sea and distance. It was beautifully told.

Thank you to Knopf publishers for sending me an ARC.

I think this is one of the best books I habe read this year. A refugee family from Vietnam navigates the culture of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina strikes and what really matters is family.