Genealogy Books - Novel without a Name

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Summary: Novel Without a Name, a very realistic book
Comment: Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a terrific novel that lets the reader into the head of a
Vietnamese soldier fighting for the North Vietnam side during the Vietnam War. A twenty-eight year
old man, Quan, is the narrator of Novel Without A Name. Quan's view of life is much different from
what it was when he was a naive 18-year-old, enlisting in the army with his childhood friends. Back
then, Quan had thought of war as a glorious time; a time when heroes and legends were made. At this
point, Quan has begun to see the Vietnam War for what it really was; a brutal massacre needlessly
killing his fellow Vietnamese people. Luong, once Quan's childhood friend, and now his commander
who's life has become the Communist Party, sends Quan on a mission to find Bien, their childhood
friend. The other task that Quan is given is one that Luong does not report to the officials, he
asks Quan to go to their home village. Luong wants Quan to do this for a variety of reasons. First,
he knows that the war will be going on much longer than was ever intended, and he knows that Quan
misses his home. Second, Luong wants Quan to reassure all the families back home that they are doing
well, even if this is partially a lie. Quan sets out on his long journey, and unfortunately is met
with bad news. The war has driven Bien to insanity. This insanity was caused by the fact that Bien
has a life threatening form of malaria, which he got from a mosquito; a very common occurrence
during the Vietnam War. The cell that holds Bien was on par with others during the War, but was
nonetheless despicable. The crazy man eats, lives, and sleeps in his own waste, and is malnourished.

After seeing Bien, Quan returns home to his village. He finds that it is not only he who has
changed during the 10 years that he has been absent. His childhood girlfriend, Hoa, whom he had
planned to marry, has become pregnant by a passing soldier. Her life is in shambles and there is
nothing he can do to help her. In addition, Quan learns that his brother had died. This came as a
shock, as Quan had not even known that his brother had enlisted. After Quan learns that it was his
father who encouraged Quang to join the army, he is enraged. His father, like many other fathers
during the time, had been sucked in by the Communist propaganda. He had volunteered his son as a way
to attain some personal honor. The shaky relationship between the father and son grows worse, and
Quang leaves his home village unhappy with his life.
During the course of the book, Quan
encounters many people, all who give the reader an idea of what the society that existed in Vietnam
during the war was like. Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a great book. Because the book
was told from the point of view of a boi doi, otherwise known as a soldier, the book seems so much
more real. By reading Novel Without A Name I feel that I have learned so much about the Vietnam war
in a way that was much more interesting than a book full of dates and facts.
Reading this book
also gave me information about the Vietnam War that could never have been obtained from a textbook.
No textbook could have fully expressed the horrors of the Vietnam war like Novel Without A Name did.
A textbook would not have told the real life experiences people went through. For example, Quan, the
narrator of the Novel Without A Name tells of a skeleton he discovered in the forest. The decomposed
body was lying in a hammock hidden by trees deep in a Vietnamese forest. Quan deduces that the man
must have become lost in the maze of trees, and after becoming too week from starvation to move on,
made a hammock and died a painful death. After searching the area, Quan found a knapsack with items
of clothing, and a letter requesting that the soldier's remains be brought to his mother. No
textbook would have told this story. I never would have known about how notorious the Vietnamese
forests were for being traps that easily ensnared humans passing through. Basically, Novel Without A
Name took me behind the scenes of the Vietnam War. There are thousands of books on the Vietnam War,
but these books cover only what occurred on the battlefields, not what was going on in the lives of
the people living in Vietnam during the time of the war.
Another example of how Duong Thu Huong
took me behind the scenes of the war, was her description of a woman with whom Quan came into
contact on his journey. This woman who collected the bodies of the dead in her area, was beastly,
but kind. She took Quan into her home because he needed food and shelter. During the course of the
novel, two other families took in Quan when he was in need of food and shelter. During the Vietnam
War, people throughout the country pulled together and took care of their men in action. This was a
common practice during the Vietnam War that I would not have known had I not read the book.

Novel Without A Name can at times be gruesome, but thus is the nature of war. If a book about
the Vietnam War did not include parts that sickened one, then that book would not be accurately be
informing readers of what occurred during the Vietnam War. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Though by reading Novel Without A Name I do not know about all the battles that took place or the
famous commanders that reigned during the war; I can honestly say that I understand what happened
during the Vietnam War.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Giving war a face
Comment: War is never a good thing. This book can give us a picture of what we were fighting against. We were
not just fighting for our country we were fighting a people. A people with thoughts and dreams for
an uncertian future. Let this book be a statement to all that there are two sides to every war.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting but flighty
Comment: While I generally enjoyed this book, I'm only giving it three stars because it's a bit goofy. Not
goofy in a HAHA sense, but, goofy in a "got hit on the head" sense. While I enjoyed Quan's travels
as well as the supporting characters, the author waxed lyrically too long and too often. While a
dab of this language would have made the prose sparkle, a thick coating only made things more
dull.

Overall, it's worth a checkout from the library.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Disenchantment with war
Comment: This book is narrated by Quan, a twenty-eight year-old soldier of the North Vietnamese Army who,
after spending ten years in the jungles of central Vietnam, is thoroughly disillusioned by the
horrible and absurd realities of war. The narrator's tone is one of disenchantment, of wistful
longing for all that has been lost--youth, life, love, family. As also shown in Paradise of the
Blind, Duong Thu Huong has a skill for detailed descriptions of everyday objects and scenes, which
are often made grotesquely surreal by her minute, harsh, objective observations. For example, in
describing the decrepit mental and physical state of Quan's childhood friend Bien, she writes, "He
sat in a pile of filth and excrement, surrounded by pools of milky, rancid urine. A torn calendar.
An old tin can filled with water." Everything touched upon by the war--the natural environment,
the people--is made ugly, thus adding to the war's horror. Even her flowers are drenched in red
colors of blood. In such an environment of degradation and death, people struggle to retain the
smallest hint human decency. This struggle is movingly portrayed in the episode when Quan spends a
night in a field station, the sole personnel of which is a homely girl who heroically goes about
burying her dead comrades. Though forced by duty to spend the best years of her life in a bleak
environment, she tries to retain some of her youthful feminine idealism by decorating her cave-room
with pictures of French singers and a paper flower, and washing and combing her hair to get rid of
the stench of human corpses which never goes away. Her futile effort in trying to get Quan to
make love to her expresses a tragic desperation. The book has no main conflict, other than Quan's
personal, psychological, spiritual conflict. As such, the book has no central story-line, but is
rather a series of dramatic episodes of the last days of the war, interspersed with reveries that
are sometimes nightmarish, sometimes poetically dreamy. The book raises the question: Is
ideological glory worth its heavy price paid for in the irrevocable LOSS of love, life, and
innocence.

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