A good scent from a strange mountain

Butler's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection presents the voices of 15 fictional Vietnamese living, now, in Louisiana, where the author has made his home for many years. The five fine stories selected are quite distinct, but common to all is a tension between the memories and traditions of the past and the stark reality of the new American present. A dutiful woman caring for her grandfather's parrot, a businessman who longs to feel more intensely for his wife, a Saigon whore looking for love in New Orleans, a former spy practicing voodoo on his wife's new lover, and an old man visited by the ghost of Ho Chi Minh, all are evoked with luminous clarity as their stories reach an epiphany that in some ways touches the very limits of dream and desire. Butler's speaking voice, bland and thin, can coat with surface poignancy stories that don't need it (because they have the real thing), but he moves them along smoothly with a strong sense of how his people think. What Kay Bonetti's interview lacks in spontaneity, it gains in articulation, for Butler, who teaches writing, is given plenty of room to express notions about his work, and about the meaning of art in general, that are clearly familiar to him. Being in Vietnam during the war was, he claims, a defining moment, but he never tells, and Bonetti never asks, what he was doing there, who he was working for and why, key questions for any listener who feels strongly about the war. But on the whole, this is an excellent introduction to a writer who has given a voice to Vietnam that we had never before heard. Recommended.‘Peter Josyph, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.