From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Start date: September 1, 2015

Finish date: September 30, 2015

Discussion: New Book Group Read

Discussion leader: Kaion

Why we're reading this: Voted as the New Book Read for September 2015
[close] Voted as the New Book Read for September 2015

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Showing 2 of 5 topics — 461 comments total

New Book Group Read

* New Book Read - July 2016 - A Little Life
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 95 posts · 41 views

last updated Sep 21, 2016 07:37AM

New Book Read - February 2016 - Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
By Sera · 93 posts · 39 views

last updated Nov 13, 2016 12:01PM

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What Members Thought

Mar 29, 2015 Lark Benobi rated it liked it

Shelves: male-identified-authors, 2015, grove

Wow. I simultaneously feel that this is a very good novel, and a not-good-enough novel. My struggle is with the narrative voice. If you're going to write satire about such a terrible subject then you need to write EXUBERANT satire--Tin Drum or Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five or The Orphan Master's Son-level exuberant. Otherwise the tone becomes too mean, and you end up obscuring what you are meaning to enlighten. The protagonist here comes across as inscrutable as the most painful stock-characte ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Nov 28, 2016 Viv JM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2016, rt-challenge-oct-16, thriller, author-male, fiction-historical, satire, fiction-literary

I was nervous about starting to read The Sympathizer because I feared it was going to be a super heavy-going read. It is not. Yes, it does deal with some heavy themes (war, violence, espionage, identity) but it is very well written and contains a good deal of humour, with some very memorable scenes (I’m looking at you, squid). I loved the writing so much that I often went back and read certain sentences over and again just to enjoy the clever and unexpected use of language.

I do wonder if some o ...more

27 likes · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2016 Nadine in California rated it it was amazing

Razor sharp writing and biting wit make this potentially grim book so readable. Examples:

Speaking of a patronizing, old white Department Chair of Oriental Studies at his college, the narrator says, “He had hung an elaborate Oriental rug on his wall, in lieu, I suppose, of an actual Oriental.”

He finds it bizarre that so many middle aged Americans seem to wear sweat clothes. "The sartorial impression was to make them, like many American adults, look like overgrown children, the effect enhanced w ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jun 10, 2016 Wendy rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-war-fiction, literary-fiction, pulitzer, culture-clash, audiobooks, edgar-award

An uneven reading experience. Told from the viewpoint of a communist sympathizer operating as a spy in L.A. during the Vietnam war, it's one of those Important & Unpleasant reads that will leave the reader in a dour mood. That said, the darkly satirical parts work best. I most enjoyed the take-down of Hollywood 'Nam films, when the protagonist finagles himself onto the movie set of some Apocalypse Now clone as a "cultural adviser". The depiction of the fall of Saigon, people packing into C-130's ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 27, 2018 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

This is the first book I have read about the Vietnam War that is not told from the perspective of the American Army.

This is about a Vietnamese American spying for the communists in the Vietnamese war. It is a strange mix of thriller and sarcastic dark humour. The description of the the evacuation of Vietnam at the end of the war was especially compelling.

By the end of the book, I was not sure where the main protagonists loyalties lay, he has one foot in American and one foot in Vietnam, he is ...more

3 likes · Like · see review