Robert Olen Butler

A collection of short stories by an American GI (who has long taught creative writing on the college level) who served as a translator in Vietnam. He clearly is taken with the country and its people but I found it offputting that all of the stories are told by Vietnamese narrators. There’s just something about an American writing from the point of view of Vietnamese narrators that bothered me. This won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993; back then, there weren’t a lot of Vietnamese authors writing or available in English so, from that perspective, I guess it’s all understandable but it mostly left me surprised that this was a Pulitzer winner.… (meer)

This is about the effect of the war on an American family told decades after the war ended. Butler has a true knack for the way people think and talk: how we say one thing even as we are thinking another. One brother served in Vietnam and one brother fled to Canada. They’re both around 70 now and the book is about their relationship and their relationships to their parents. Very well done. A far better book than A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. As someone who remembers that period vividly, I found it moving, evocative, and true.… (meer)