There is something that feels wrong in giving this such a low rating. It wasn't a bad book I just didn't really enjoy it. I had a very hard time connecting to the stories and the characters. This is usually the case when it comes to short stories, it puts a huge burden on the author to grab the reader quickly.
While I did not enjoy the writing style I can recognize this has literary merit and will be greatly enjoyed by some readers. I was just not one of them.

Uncorrected Proof provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
See my full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1873005174

This short story collection is next level. I feel a little sad that I didn't read it earlier. I am officially a fan of this author. Short stories are magical. They're these tiny little gifts that are self contained (mostly). Anyone that can write them and make the reader feel something in a tiny span of time is basically a genius. This collection is about people that have been dislocated from their homes or separated from their families. I believe they all center around people of Vietnamese origin or descent. It's great and you should read it.

Normally I am not a fan of short stories and find myself missing character and storyline development, but this collection was stunning, moving and well thought out.

Going into this collection I was expecting that the stories will focus on the experience of Vietnamese immigrants/refugees in the US, however, the immigrant/refugee aspect mostly serves as a backdrop for the stories that actually deal with more mundane themes such as grief, sexuality and ageing. The collection includes some very well-crafted stories, however, I must admit that, for the most part, I was kind of underwhelmed by this collection, but I still look forward to reading the author’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Sympathizer".

I love Viet Thanh Nguyen. The writing in this book was incredible and you can't help but care for the characters and their stories. Such a great read and it was really tugging at my heartstrings the entire time.

The Refugees

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

I read Nguyen's well-received first book, The Sympathizer, so I was eager to read this collection of short stories, and happy to see it available on NetGalley. When I initially selected Sympathizer, it was on my husband's recommendation, but that book easily sold me on Nguyen's ability to compel a reader, especially one who wasn't sure about the subject. Like Sympathizer, the characters here live difficult, often impossible lives. In some cases, I admit, I wasn't sorry the story was short; I was happy to escape to a different place, with new characters and challenges. Despite the slim volume, the characters are fully-realized, and their stories are crafted with care and compassion.

For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — Because I thought The Sympathizer was excellent, painful as it was.
Reminded me of… A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, for some reason. Perhaps the undercurrent of frustration and doom?
For my full review — click here

Fairly solid book of short stories, all revolving around Vietnamese people who have, at some time or another in their lives, immigrated to America. The writing is solid and very skillfully done. Once I started reading these stories (and I know this is weird), but I was surprised with how 'relaxed' I felt with it. I loved that there were multiple angles here as well--people living with ghosts (literally), sibling rivalry, dealing with a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. Some standouts were "Black Eyed Women," "War Years," and "The Transplant." I have not yet read Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel "The Sympathizer" but I definitely plan to. Great book!

My sincerest apologies. I completely forgot I was awarded this book. I just read it and loved it. I was captivated by the first story in the collection, Black-Eyed Woman; which is pretty apropos for this time of year. Halloween. Nguyen's writing is tight, but I expected nothing less. Although not a refugee or a Vietnamese immigrant, but as an African-American, I found myself relating on multiple levels with some of the characters. Many of the characters suffered silently to avoid dealing with their past. I remember my Southern grandparents not wanting to talk about their painful experiences growing up in the South.

Perhaps my favorite story of all is: "I'd Love You to Want Me". It's endearing and heartbreaking and, for those of us dealing with a spouse, parent, or friend with dementia/Alzheimers - horrifically relatable. I applaud Mrs. Khanh dealing with the hurt and pain of being called another woman's name with dignity.

In this collection of short stories, there were a couple that didn't quite hit the ball out of the park but came close to it. They were the ones I thought could have been a little longer, but that's just a personal preference. And having said that they still didn't detract from the collection.

Impressive collection of short stories focused on Vietnamese refugees and their experiences. Very well written and all of the stories are very different from each other, which made it even more interesting. I appreciated this collection and enjoyed reading the stories but it didn't really give me any warm fuzzies or hug at my heartstrings - not that kind of a book, at least for me.

Thanks for NetGalley and Grove Press for an ARC of this collection.

These stories give us a different viewpoint .... a different voice. I thought about these stories well after I had put down the book.

A riveting collection of stories that covers the struggles of Vietnamese refugees.

The issue of refugees and immigration is a pulsing, red, hot button of our times. The atmosphere of hate and suspicion that surrounds much of the discourse around this issue is stifling, and largely ignores the humanity of the people themselves. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, is a poignant look at the lives such displaced souls build, at the roots they try to carry with them, and the roots they put down again.
The Refugees is a short anthology of eight short stories, each of them a gem.

Black-Eyed Women is a ghost story, about a writer who is visited by the ghost of her brother, who died protecting her. It is filled with love and loss, the only horror in it evoked when one thinks of the hardship and cruelty that refugees have to deal with.

In The Other Man a Vietnamese man comes to the USA and lives with a gay couple, one of whom is English and the other from Hong Kong. It deals with ideas like culture shock and assimilation.

War Years is one of my favourite stories in the collection. Told from the POV of a 13 year old boy, it describes the conflict between a woman collecting money to fight the communists and his mother, who is unwilling to part with hard-earned money for what she believes is a futile cause.

In The Transplant a white man tries to form a connection with the son of a man whose liver was transplanted into him, saving his life. It raises questions of identity.

I'd Love You To Want Me is the poignant, touching tale of the wife of an Alzheimer's patient. He keeps calling her by another name, making her wonder if her husband had an affair in the past.

The Americans negotiates the push and pull of the past versus the present, through the differing perspectives of a daughter volunteering in Vietnam and her father who fought in the war.

In Someone Else Besides You, a son resents his father, and this leads him to make some decisions he regrets. The father attempts to make things right. This story is another one of my favourites, as it, like the previous story, navigates the generation gap with great sensitivity.

The closing story Fatherland, like the first, is about siblings. But in this case, step siblings, who are each other's namesake, and who are separated by geography. It explores ideas of staying behind versus risking everything for a new life.

Familial bonds, ideas of loss and love, of belonging and identity are some of the common themes that run through these stories. The characters in each of these stories shine, flaws and all.

In all honesty, my words do not do justice to the gentle, sad beauty of this collection. Living in today's world where issues of home and homelessness abound, where suspicions breed a lack of empathy, The Refugees is a bit like a pain balm that stings initially, but offers relief later in the form of hope.

FTC disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for this honest review.

https://thereadingdesk.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/book-review-the-refugees/

This book was difficult to get into and stay motivated to read. The writing was very beautiful though. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review!

Book that, as they say, falls in the lap in this time when it comes to refugees and ius soli. Here are South Vietnamese refugees, fleeing the victorious communists, and their children. Starrings are on one hand the longing for the lost land and on the other a mixture of anger at the Americans for having left Vietnam, and gratitude for welcoming them. America and Americans, however, are only a backdrop, as the world these refugees live in is not Vietnam, but it is not entirely America. In any case these stories, as well as being interesting, are poignant.
Thank Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A wonderful, haunting and mesmerising collection of stories which explore the world of immigrants, contrasted with their children, born in this new land. Highly recommended.

"The Refugees" is a short book of short stories, and yet in every story, you will feel all the feels for the characters and the situation they are in. I haven't found a single weak story in the entire book, they are all beautifully written and so easy to get into. Being a refugee means living between two worlds, the country they left and the one they reached, not really a part of either of them. There is the idea they came looking for abroad, and the idea the people who stayed behind have of them. In some cases, there is also the trauma of fleeing a country in less than ideal circumstances, to put it midly, and maybe we indeed need a reminder of what the refugees around us went and still go through just to get a try at a better life.

I began "The Sympathizer", this author's Pulitzer-winning book, last year. It wasn't for me at the time- it felt too cynical, and the denseness of the prose put me off. There was a lot of anger in that book that I wasn't prepared to deal with.

I read these stories while on a plane to Vietnam. The common theme of all these stories is what it's like to be a refugee, as I believe the author himself is. The first story "Blackeyed Women", is about a girl whose brother died on the boat that brought them over. She's never since felt like she deserves a life, and lives in the shadows, writing for other people- a literal ghost writer.

While that story was quite affecting, I liked some of the others better. One, about a boy who works in his mother's store after school (the family sells imports, Vietnamese food mostly) and who sees his mother's strength and vulnerability, was a favorite.

The author touches on a young man newly come to San Francisco with help from his church, a daughter who meets her father's daughter from his other, American family, a hustler selling bootleg goods, a woman whose husband is losing himself to Alzheimer's and is beginning to slip back into his past. He makes all of his characters real, touching, exasperating, human.

These stories seemed more heartfelt to me than what I read of "The Sympathizer". My understanding is that they've been written over a long period of time, unlike that book. These stories feel like they were meditated upon. I am not traditionally a fan of short stories, but these are quite impressive.

The stories told in this collection made me feel. I don't know that there is much greater compliment I can offer a collection. The stories were moving and evoked a sense of reality - I felt less a reader than a spectator as the stories were told.

This should be required reading in our society that is so confused and uninformed about the reality of what it means to be a Refugee.

A great short story collection. The writing is never 'samey' and the cast of characters and situations are extremely varied and usually very well done. It's the best short story collection I've read in awhile.

From my spring reading roundup 2017 in (Boone, N.C.) Mountain Times featuring "The Refugees":

While it’s undeniable that spring is in the air in the High Country, it’s equally true that the warm and sunny months of summer are a few months off. With that in mind, Mountain Times has assembled a spring reading list — a variety of books and authors you may have missed between the rush of the holiday season and the urge to get out in your garden. Take your pick among them, and before you know it you’ll be well-prepped for our next project: the Mountain Times summer reading list.

Fiction

“Fever Dream” by Samanta Scheweblin

Samanta Scheweblin was named one of the 22 best writers in Spanish younger than 35 by Granta, and debut novel “Fever Dream” (Riverhead Books) shows us why. A haunting, deceptively thin book, Scheweblin’s novel has been called a “ghost story for the real world.” Amanda lies dying in a rural clinic while David, a young boy, sits beside her. They are not mother and son, but together they conjure a desperate and cautionary tale. The ending of this one will not fail to surprise. Strange and psychological, “Fever Dream” comes to us in English translated by Megan McDowell.

“The Red Sphinx” by Alexandre Dumas

“The Red Sphinx” (Pegasus Books) is not a new novel, but falls into the category of “who knew?” As in, who knew — at least in contemporary times — that Alexandre Dumas had written more than one sequel to “The Three Musketeers?” Dumas published his well-known masterpiece in 1844, and shortly after wrote the sequel, “Twenty Years After.” Near the end of his career, Dumas again went to the well and drew inspiration from “The Three Musketeers” and wrote “The Red Sphinx,” a novel that picks up a mere 20 days after his signature novel ends. Part of the reason that “The Red Sphinx” has languished in publication is that Dumas never finished it. In this volume, Pegasus Books takes the 25 finished chapters and combines it with a completed novella, “The Dove,” detailing the final exploits of Moret and Cardinal Richelieu. And, so we have “The Red Sphinx,” with its nearly 800 pages newly translated by Lawrence Ellsworth.

“No Man’s Land” by Simon Tolkien

Say the name Tolkien and most bibliophiles get all tingly, and with “No Man’s Land,” (Nan A. Talese) there is certainly reason for the feeling as Simon Tolkien draws on the World War I real-life experiences of his grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien. A journey tale, “No Man’s Land” follows Adam Raine from a young boy plagued by hard luck through the challenges of losing his mother, a difficult relocation to a coal mining town and the world of a nobleman who never lets him get above his rank. Yet, Adam finds love and earns a scholarship to Oxford and seems to be on a path to a better life — until the World War breaks out and everything is threatened. Different from anything his grandfather wrote, you'll nevertheless note that writing talent is a family affair for the Tolkiens.

“The World To Come: Stories” by Jim Shepard

In his fifth collection of short stories, Jim Shepard presents 10 tales, and a book full of original voices. “The World To Come: Stories” (Knopf) showcases Shepard’s unique talent of condensing a full novel into three dozen pages, with each outcome a satisfying read. From chronicling English Arctic explorers to the story of crew members in danger on a World War II submarine, Shepard continues to showcase his gift of writing fiction that brings the long ago and far away to our present reality. Shepard has been called the “best living writer of short fiction currently publishing in America.” “The World to Come” helps make the case.

“The Refugees” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

From the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (“The Sympathizer”) comes another powerful book, this one of short stories, “The Refugees” (Grove Press). Timely and unpredictable, these stories offer two distinct worlds and center on the hardships of immigration — from a young Vietnamese refugee experiencing culture upheaval when he comes to live with two men in San Francisco, to a wonderfully tender, yet harsh, story of a woman whose husband is on the throes of dementia and begins to confuse her with a former lover. Thanh Nguyen humanizes the refugee experience in small bites that offer a place at the table for all of us.

“New York 2140” by Kim Stanley Robinson

In the vein of “it had to happen,” Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” (Orbit) follows the lives of several apartment dwellers in a building in Manhattan after global warming has pushed all the world’s coastlines underwater. From the pen of Robinson, winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, all of the “what-ifs” and “whys” are covered — from the science behind the tides to the economic fallout. The novel is tied tightly together in an ending that is worth the journey of the author’s meticulous prose and more than 600 pages of story that explores how skyscrapers may have become islands, but for the residents of one building, life goes on.

Poetry

“A Sunday In Purgatory” by Henry Morgenthau III

Wonderfully accessible, “A Sunday In Purgatory” (Passager Books) is part memoir, part cultural exploration, but all written by a man who has reached his centennial year. Henry Morgenthau III’s poetry is insightful and, at times, heartbreakingly honest — “Unexpectedly I caught sight/ of an old guy the other day,/ in a mirror. A crippled derelict/ stumbling forward/ in a slow syncopated hobble./ I tried to turn away from/ that unsightly image of myself” (“Unsightly Image”). For sure, you will see Morgenthau, and yourself, differently by the end of the book of verse written with precision and nuance.

“It’s Good Weather for Fudge: Conversing with Carson McCullers” by Sue Brannon Walker

So, what if you were a former Alabama state poet laureate who wanted to imagine a conversation with Carson McCullers in celebration of that famous author’s centenary birth anniversary in 2017? What you would come up with would be Sue Brannon Walker’s “It’s Good Weather for Fudge: Conversing with Carson McCullers” (NewSouth Books), a poetic tribute to the author of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” and other works. Walker shows expert knowledge of McCuller’s canon, but diffuses the literary journey with pleasant inroads into the life of the author. Fans of McCullers’ works will want this essential companion piece.

Nonfiction

“Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the 21st Century” by Marcus J. Borg

Two years after the liberal theologian’s death, Marcus J. Borg still has something to offer those who wish to explore progressive Christianity. “Days of Awe and Wonder” (HarperOne) includes never before published selections of the author’s work in an anthology that demands an open mind and the questioning of assumptions in the context of contemporary society.

“The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America” by Mark Sundeen

In this work of immersive journalism, Mark Sundeen profiles the quests of those in search of a life more simple than the demands of a 24/7, electronic, Twitter-driven society. “The Unsettlers” (Riverhead Books) offers a chronicle of those who have opted out of mainstream culture — and how difficult that journey can be.

“The Life and Work of John C. Campbell” by Olive Dame Campbell and edited by Elizabeth M. Williams

A pioneer in the study of Appalachian mountaineers, John C. Campbell traveled with his wife, Olive Dame Campbell, throughout the region to interview and write about the people who live there. Campbell wrote the definitive work on the area, “The Southern Highlander and His Homeland,” a work still cited today by major scholars studying the region. Editor Elizabeth McClutchen Williams’ work, “The Life and Work of John C. Campbell” (University Press of Kentucky), now offers the first critical edition of Oliver Dame Campbells’ unfinished overview of her husband’s life. Using the first-account resources of diaries and letters, this exhaustive volume provides unique insights into the life of the educator.

“Conversations with Ron Rash” edited by Mae Miller Claxton and Rain Newcomb

There is no better author of Appalachian fiction than Ron Rash, and this volume, “Conversations with Ron Rash” (University Press of Mississippi) offers honest and in-depth profiles of the author. Rash’s connection to Watauga County, N.C., is well-documented, but in this volume, dozens of interviews explore how that connection ultimately came to fruition in “Serena” and other prize-winning novels and volumes of poetry. Rash shares much through these interviews, including much about the writing process itself. Editors Mae Miller Claxton and Rain Newcomb have done a fine job assembling interviews from the beginning of Rash’s writing career (“The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth") through 2015’s “Above the Waterfall.” The passion and exactitude of the author is on fine display here in a volume essential for anyone studying Rash’s career and works.