Poetic, heartbreaking, and engrossing: a very sad story that made me learn about the aftermath of Vietnam war and how the life of people was changed by it in more than one way.
Well written, it's a story talks about tragic issues but never turns soppy.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

"Don't stand on one mountain And say the next is more beautiful"

Happy Publication Day to one of my favourite authors of all time and the purest soul!

Dust Child was my most anticipated release of 2023 after adoring The Mountains Sing. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it but at the same time wanted to savour the anticipation and every moment as I knew as soon as it was over I would wish only to read it for the first time again, what I can say firmly is that this book did not disappoint me. I finished it 6 weeks or so ago now and there’s not been a day that I haven’t thought about it.

One thing that Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai does so so well is create wonderful imagery, her writing transported me to not only a different place but a different time too. I smelt the smells, tasted the food and saw the many many sights. I’m fortunate enough to have visited Vietnam but even if I hadn’t I would feel as though I have.

What I really loved about this one was the dual timelines. I loved the fact they knitted together and that in reading one it allowed us to feel closer to the other rather than it leading to any kind of disconnect.

The characters have so much depth and there’s so much understanding for every feeling that they have and it made them feel so raw and real. Through their emotions the author explored bigger topics showing such a pure understanding for human nature and the world

No matter what genre you read, read this book. It is just so wonderful, poignant and I feel so lucky to have experienced it.

"She knew now that to live without imagination was only to exist, and to be without books was the greatest punishment"

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book although it took me a few chapters to get into it. The story begins in Vietnam with two sisters who find themselves having to work in Saigon during the Vietnamese war. The two end up in "tea house" entertaining American soldiers. Inevitably one of them gets pregnant and the story continues as Dan a helicopter pilot returns to Vietnam to try and find some inner peace caused by his war time actions. The plot has a few twists and turns and the characters are very believable and likeable. It gave a good insight into the Dust Children, so named Amerasians, and the prejudice and difficulties they faced both in their own country and also those who travelled to America to meet/find their fathers there.
I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it. I am also planning to read the authors previous novel The Mountains Sing.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

This is a book that takes us to 1969 Vietnam and also to 2016. It is a book that describes what life is like for the 'dust children', the children of American GIs and Vietnamese women, children whose lives were extremely hard in the majority of cases because of their mixed race. We have four POVs - Phong is the offspring of a black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman. Abandoned at an orphanage, he does not know either parent, but as a parent of two children himself, in 2016 he wants to go to America to try to find his father. Dan is an American GI who left a Vietnamese girl pregnant and now in 2016, he returns to Vietnam with his wife to try to find the girl and his child. Trang and Quỳnh are sisters working the rice fields who are persuaded by their friend to go to Saigon to earn money to repay their parents debts. All they will need to do is drink tea with the American soldiers who frequent the bar and naively the sisters believe her. Beautifully written and very well researched, we follow these four characters and it is intriguing to see how everything comes together. On a personal note, although I enjoyed this novel, sadly I didn't really engage with any of the characters - none of them made me 'feel' for them.

What a wonderful read. A real contender for the 'if you read just one book this year' title.
Beautifully written and wonderfully descriptive, you can feel the heat and smell the smells of Vietnam.
Skipping back between the time of the war and to more recents times, the book follows three groups of people.
Two sisters who leave their rural home to become 'tea girls' in the bars of Sai Gon,
An Amerasian trying to get to Amercia to provide what he feels will be a better life for his family.
A Vietnam veteran returning to Vietnam on a trip with this wife tying to make sense of his past.
As their stories are told their world's collide.
A faboulous educational and observational look at the time of the war and what the people involved both endured then and continue to endue now.

During the Vietnam war, almost three million Americans were posted to the country at various times and part of their legacy was a cohort of illegitimate children of colour abused by a culture which preferred pale skin and a politics which despised anyone who had consorted with the invading army. This book provides an insight into events and lives shaped by these events.

Trang and Quynh are two Vietnamese sisters driven by family circumstances to work in bars in Saigon. Dan and Linda are Americans revisiting the war which left Dan with acute PTSD. Phong is a Vietnamese man, all too obviously the child of a black American, who yearns to find a better life for his family and to escape his past traumas of adoption and abuse.

There is historical background but, in the present, Dan is seeking Kim, a Vietnamese girlfriend who he made pregnant and then deserted and, as the plot develops, so do the links between these characters.

It’s a good read, authentic about the hardships experienced in Vietnam in both the war and its aftermath. The characters of the two sisters and the ways in which they are slowly drawn into prostitution are well charted, while Phong faces setback after setback in trying to find out who he is. The war has created a lost population uncertain of their place in society or who they really are.

Unsurprisingly, the book is stronger on Vietnam than the USA. Dan and Linda are not entirely convincing as characters and to make the plot work they have to be making this voyage rather later in life than might be expected. There are also issues of colour here which are not really brought out.

However, as a whole, the book shines a light on an ignored facet of a bloody war and tells a powerful story along the way.

This is a beautifully written book. It weaves together the interconnected stories of two sisters who move to Saigon during the Vietnam War; the American boyfriend of one; and Phong, an Amerasian born from the wartime union of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. The story moves back and forth between roughly the present and the war years. The tragedy of the war, the tremendous resilience of the Vietnamese people and the depth and beauty of Vietnam and its history and culture is evocatively portrayed through the wonderful writing of Nguyễn Phan. I highly recommended this fabulous book. Special thanks to Oneworld Publications and NetGalley for a no-obligation advance review copy.

Highly anticipated following ‘The Mountains Sing’ this book had a lot to live up to. Not often for me does a second book meet those high expectations but this certainly did. Nguyen is becoming that author that I know I can go to and the quality of writing is consistent.
I loved this, historical fiction, learning about another culture and an intricately woven family saga. I learned about the war in Viet Nam and how American soldiers often had short lived relationships with Vietnamese women, some resulting in pregnancy. Based on true events, American men often returned to Viet Nam many years later to find the women and the children they left behind, which caused catastrophes by unearthing old heart ache.
The research was thorough and writing was beautiful. I read it in a couple of days.

I enjoyed this book, although it took some while for me to engage with the story. Some parts felt very slow and often too contrived. I learnt a lot about the Vietnam war itself as well as the plight of the ‘Amerasians’ .
Thank you to NetGalley and Oneworld Publications for the advance copy of this book.

This book took a little while to get into but I ended up totally enthralled. The Vietnam war isn’t something I knew much about but I found it fascinating nonetheless. This book has clearly been well researched and this came through in the authenticity of the settings, the historical backdrop, the characters and their psychological scars. The three threads of the story interwove beautifully and I found myself emotionally invested in the outcomes of each of the main characters. A captivating read.

Absolutely adored this book, beautiful writing and at times heartbreaking. I will definitely be reading more from this author in the future.

The book is set in Vietnam and goes back and forth to the Vietnamese war and the present and centres around 3 main characters.
Trang comes from a poor family and travels to Saigon with her sister Quynh to make money to settle their parents debts.
Dan was an American GI who fought during the war. Still suffering from PTSD, he travels back to Vietnam with his wife Linda, hoping to put to rest his demons. Unbeknown to Linda, he also wants to search for the girl he loved but abandoned when he found out she was pregnant with his child.
Phong is a ‘Dust Child’, left outside an orphanage by his mother when he was just a few days old. He dreams of taking his family to America for a better life.
Beautifully written, their stories are cleverly interwoven, and the author brings Saigon to life with its poverty, discrimination and hope.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is a really beautiful read and although it was at times heartbreaking it was also filled with hope and redemption. The story is told from different points of view and timelines and i just loved how little by little the stories began to come together and interweave with each other. The stories in the book are hard ones to read it deals in a time during the Vietnam war a time of hardship for families in the war torn villages and cities when you girls would do anything to survive and help out their families and this made for some difficult reading.
So a read that I absolutely loved the author brought the people and places to life with her wonderful writing and a massive thank you to her for a read that I won’t forget.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Oneworld Publication’s for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I think most people have images of the Vietnam War and the American soldiers and are familiar with the long-term effects of that conflict, but Dust Child is a wonderful exploration of the theme. It’s very readable even though a lot of the scenes are upsetting. The characters are very well crafted and the narrative strands weave together beautifully. We get to know veteran Dan and his wife Linda, both in their 60s, contemporary time, as Dan returns for the first time to confront his memories and service life, Phong, the Dust Child, as a young man and now as a middle-aged man struggling with the racism and difficulties of being a resented Amerasian, vilified for his dark skin, and the young women earning a living in occupied Sai Gon.
Quite apart from the sympathetically drawn characters and empathy for the “dust children” like Phong, there are some important insights about racial stereotyping, the objectifying of women in Vietnamese culture and Vietnam’s French colonial past. Que Mai also writes beautifully about the landscape, food and heritage of her country. There’s a lot to think about and discuss in Dust Child. A very moving and powerful read

This one is going to be on my top books for this year, like The Mountains Sing was last year! I learned so much about Vietnam during the war and all the challenges both Vietnamese and Americans had to deal with in that time. It is very well written and easy toread despite the tough times explained on the story, I devoured this one! If you love historical fiction, this one needs to be on your TBR.

Wow… just wow. Here is another unforgettable novel from the author of The Mountains Sing. Beautifully written and very compelling.
What happened during the Vietnam War cannot be justified. Yet we gain an understanding of both sides as multiple sides are highlighted. I love how the storylines eventually come together.

This book might be on its way to one of the best books read this year. I cannot even explain what I loved so much, the story of the girls that even if it doesn't end the fairy tale way, it's way better than I expected. All the time I was expecting something to happen, it didn't happen the way I imagined it so I loved that. I learned so much from the book, even if it's just fiction and I feel like everyone has to read this book.

I loved this book! Once again Nguyen Phan Que Mai has knocked it out of the park. I was totally immersed in the lives and worlds of these characters and didn't want their stories to end. I found all of the central characters sympathetic and easy to connect with, and the weaving together of their stories and the different time-frames in the novel was done so skilfully that I stayed 'in' the story the entire time. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

This week, I finished Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and let’s just say I AM ABSOLUTELY HEART BROKEN and filled with hope for a better world all at the same time.

Through the interwoven stories of two Vietnamese girls, an Amerasian man and an American GI, Dust Child presents the complex decisions made during the Việt Nam War and how in the following decades the characters return to their secrets and unanswered questions to search deep within themselves for peace, healing and love.

Written as a result of in-depth research during her PhD on real life events such as the Amerasian Homecoming Act and the sex industry that was created in Việt Nam as a result of the 2.7 million American soldiers in the country during the war, Dust Child empowers the voices of marginalised groups to tell an incredibly important, poetic and touching story.

In 1969, Trang and Quỳnh, two sisters and famers, make their way to the big city, Sài Gòn, to become bar girls so that they can pay off their parents debts. Going against everything they know about traditional values of womanhood, they drink and flirt with American GIs in return for money. As times go on, Trang shocks herself by falling in love with Dan, an American helicopter pilot, who has a fiancé back home.

Decades after the end of the war, we learn about Phong, an Amerasian man, who has been treated as outcast of society for his entire life due being an abandoned child of an American soldier and Vietnamese woman. Parallel to this, Dan returns to Việt Nam with his wife in an attempt to heal from his PTSD and secretly search for Trang, who he had abandoned after learning she was pregnant with his child.

Dust child caught me off guard with its ability to make me feel compassion for all the character - as in all honesty I hated Dan at first and he gave me white saviour vibes, and ok maybe still haven’t forgiven him for leaving Trang… but it really gave me hope that there is chance for peace and reconciliation after war.

Thank you to Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai for shining a light into the dark corners of an untold history, whilst also giving the world a wake up call on how we should treat others with compassion and strive for peace and forgiveness. <3

And thanks to Net Galley and One World Publications, who sent me an online ARC of this book <3

What an amazing depiction of the effects of war and its repercussions on the human soul. I knew relatively little about the Vietnam war, and certainly never knew or thought about the consequences for mixed race offspring as a result of relationships between the American GIs and Vietnamese locals during this time. The title refers to the name given to these progeny. The attitude towards these children in Vietnam, and particularly those with mixed African American parentage is horrifying. With no hope of a successful future in Vietnam these children have also virtually been abandoned by American authorities who had made it increasingly difficult for these children to emigrate to the USA. What I found most impressive was that the author made me understand the viewpoint of every major character in the plot , their reasons for what they did and how they felt. It really made me think whether I would have done anything different in their situation. The depiction of how war, fear and desperation can change a person’s personality and morals was totally convincing. This is clearly a topic very close to the author’s heart and her passion for its accurate portrayal was clear. Her research and execution of this difficult subject is admirable and faultless. This book has had a huge impact on me and I have thought of little else since I finished reading it several days ago - very rarely does a book have that effect on me. That is surely recommendation enough in itself. I am very grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC.

Sent from my iPad