https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/uyen-nicole-duong/postcards-from-nam/
POSTCARDS FROM NAM
A lawyer in the United States who escaped Communist Vietnam as a child receives mysterious postcards from a childhood friend that reopens old emotional wounds.
Mimi works in Washington, D.C., as a lawyer. Lost in the hazy blur of her hectic career, she rarely pauses to consider her traumatic childhood. Born and raised in Vietnam, she fled the country with her family in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists. Her grandmother refused to join them, however, afraid that her frailty would prevent their escape. Years later, now a successful professional living a thoroughly American life, Mimi begins to receive postcards from someone named Nam—she can’t recall anyone of that name, but he seems to know her well, referring to her as Mi Chau, the Vietnamese name no one she knows now uses. Her mother remembers him, though, as a sweet boy who lived across the alley in Saigon, a talented artist who brought Mimi treats, told her ghost stories, and tearfully professed his love for her. Mimi becomes obsessed with finding Nam and learning his fate, a dogged pursuit that brings her into a long-overdue confrontation with her own, formerly silenced demons, a struggle affectingly portrayed by author Duong. “Nam became my project—the symbol for my pursuit of nobility and the return to my roots.” In nimble prose, the author explores the intractability of the protagonist’s past, as resistant to revision as it is to evasion. Mimi is a memorably drafted character, both emotionally fragile and relentless. This is a brief novella—under 100 pages—but densely layered with poignancy and nuance.
A moving, poetically rendered tale of personal pain buried deep in willful self-reinvention.
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