Thomas's Reviews > The Boat

"Faulkner, you know," my friend said over the squeals, "he said we should write the old verities. Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."

This quote is planted square in the middle of Nam Le's opening story, a metafictional conceit that allows the author to address the reader directly about how ethnicity and the immigrant experience can both confer a special status on an author while also becoming a crutch, hobbling his imagination.

That's precisely what I admire so much about this collection. Nam Le shows an impressive reach in the range of these stories. The most successful--the opening story, "Halfhead Bay", and "Meeting Elise" are grounded by sympathetic characters and some sizzling prose. The least successful don't fail because Nam Le wasn't "writing about what he knows" as some other reviews on this site have indicated. They fall flat from an overexposure to one too many writing workshops. Fearing melodrama, Le strips any emotional arc from stories like "Hiroshima" or "Tehran Calling." Characters are mired in their own ennui. Here the preachings of a literary culture that mistrusts redemption and epiphany and grace lead to stories that fail to move.

Such blemishes in an otherwise stirring collection are just fine with this reader. "Write what you know" is one of the most wearisome cliches of the workshop. I'm glad that Le has chosen instead to reach for the Other, while still daring to explore his own complex heritage. The result makes for a rich stew of stories overall, one that introduces a writer who shows great promise.