Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen Viking Penguin HK$185
As a memoirist (Stealing Buddha's Dinner) and now novelist, Vietnamese-American author Bich Minh Nguyen deals in the language of the love, loss and hazy identity that accompanies expatriation necessitated by war. And she writes most movingly about herself.
In her essay How I Found My Mother, Nguyen writes about finding a photograph of her mother, whom she hasn't seen since she was eight months old. She leads the reader into the tale with a masterful hand, lingering on each emotional note without being maudlin.
Such pieces make one wonder why there seems to be an emotional disconnect in her novel Short Girls. The Luong sisters - studious Van and devil-may-care Linny, characters that are borderline Asian female stereotypes - are dealing with their messy love lives while also trying to understand their Vietnamese-immigrant father's sudden desire to become an American citizen.
Van, a lawyer, is trying to keep her husband's leaving her a secret. Linny is trying to escape an affair with a married man.
As expected, the sisters, distant after years of living apart, rebuild their bond while squabbling over their father's citizenship party plans and his ambition to take the contraptions he invents to reality TV. And there are flashbacks to their childhood as refugees.