The Boat: Stories - Tapa blanda

"Nam Le's lyricism and emotional urgency lend his portraits enormous visceral power. . . . A remarkable collection." --The New York Times

"[The stories in Nam Le's The Boat] flout the traditional maxim 'Write what you know, ' taking on characters as diverse as Colombian drug lords, Iranian feminists, and a New York painter who sounds a lot like Lucian Freud. All sincere works of the imagination, these stories yet bear a self-conscious riposte to conventional wisdom. . . . Mr. Le stands out from the crowd [of debut writers] because of the breadth of his research and the confidence of his imagination. He may prize the universal, but he doesn't skimp on concrete detail. In 'Tehran Calling, ' for example, he could have described the row between an American visitor and her Iranian friend with dialogue and a few descriptions, but instead he takes us walking on the streets, describes smells, effects of lighting, and the fine points of street wear. . . . I found 'Hiroshima, ' the most experimental story here, also to be one of the most absorbing. . . . There are many ticklish questions to ask about fiction and its sources, and they have been asked, recently, by many writers. Mr. Le's distinction is to ask them without once seeming other than a hardworking practitioner of quality American lit." --Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun

"Sensational . . . There is something thrilling in discovering a gifted new writer on the American scene. And that is what we have in Nam Le, whose short story collection, The Boat, easily will be among the significant works of fiction published this year. . . . Stories that both crackle with immediacy and sport a cool, focused tone. His characters are drawn with an old master's depth . . . It's not often that a work of highbrow fiction moves like a suspense novel, but that's the kind of talent Nam Le displays. It reaffirms your faith in literature. . . . There is a spare architecture to his sentences, yet he has the ability to create complex worlds, shadowed by bleakness and heartbreak. . . . His first story alternates between playful satire and dread seriousness, showing the kind of balancing act Le can pull off. [In] 'Cartagena, ' Le vividly sketches the cardboard cities and muddy streets of Medellin . . . The story has the hypnotic power of a Graham Greene nightmare. . . . The book's masterpiece is 'Halflead Bay, ' an Aussie twist on Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. . . . It is full of rich description, an ear for native lingo and keen observations of dysfunctional family dynamics. As you read the last lines of The Boat, it is not a stretch to flash on 'The Dead, ' the legendary final story in Joyce's Dubliners. . . . A book filled with grace, texture and humanity." --Larry Aydlette, The Palm Beach Post

"Stories [that] engulf you and transport you to another time, another place-give you a window into someone else's soul almost deeper than if it were your own. . . . Long on character, depth and emotion: you'd swear that [Nam Le] has lived in every one of those stories [that make up The Boat]. When you finish each one, you will feel as if you have read a novel, your breathing will be heavy and your heart will be pounding as you return from a deeply personal adventure that has, in some strange way, become your own. . . . The thread tying the stories together in The Boat is the dramatic humanity, the poetic language, and most of all, the idea that that depth and intensity of human emotion is expressed on every continent. We are not so different after all." --Faye Levow, Portsmouth Herald News

"Four stars . . . The stories [in The Boat] connect across country, class and circumstance-not only through Le's ambition to nail each milieu, but through his obsession with the ways people live in and reveal their cultures . . . Each story immerses readers in its own distant setting. The book's success isn't just a matter of scene-setting; it also depends on Le's characters and his classic, coincidences-explained-later plotting. He'll make you marvel at the web his South American hit men are caught in, and he'll make you worry for them. . . . In a piece about an Iranian activist and the clueless white friend who comes to visit her, he writes the part of the American interloper with sympathy and aplomb. . . . Le offers real insight." --Sophie Fels, Time Out New York

"Seven stories set around the globe-from Iowa to Tehran, Manhattan to Australia, and Colombia to Hiroshima-make up Vietnam-born Nam Le's dynamic debut collection, The Boat, in which achingly familiar alliances converge in ingeniously unlikely places." --Lisa Shea, Elle

"Wide-ranging, knife-sharp stories by a masterly 29-year-old. Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia, yet his debut collection of stories, The Boat, reveals as mature and certain an American voice as just about any native-born writer twice his age. His prose evokes Philip Roth's-sure of itself, clean, and invisibly effective. These muscular and psychologically rich narratives take place in the United States, Australia, Colombia, and in a storm-tossed boat in the South China Sea [and] contend with a startlingly wide array of characters . . . What's notable is the structural soundness of these powerful and far-ranging pieces: Each one is built to exactly the shape, and flows in exactly the tone and language, that will suit the needs of the story. The final and longest story in the book, 'The Boat, ' takes on the deepest issues of life, love, and death, something worthy of Conrad or James. Nam Le is a remarkably sophisticated new writer." --Vince Passaro, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Stories rooted in war and history [that] frequently zoom in on the affairs of characters who have to live with the consequences. . . . Le uses his wonderfully flexible prose style to explore Vietnamese ethnic identity, writing workshops, and even plain old drunkenness." --Colin Marshall, The Santa Barbara Independent

"Stories [that] are reflective of their writer: eclectic, diverse, true in their toughness and giving in their complexity. . . . Two gems [are] 'Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, ' [which] is art at its highest form, incorporating satire, metafiction, homage, and social critique into a story about a writer and his father and the infamous My Lai Massacre, [and] the title story 'The Boat' [which] is filled with so much emotional truth, it borders the line with non-fiction. . . . It turned a tale into an experience and brought us that much closer to one another." --Ky-Phong Tran, Nguoi Viet Daily News

"[Nam Le's] personal history is as compelling and engrossing as any of his writing. . . . A debut collection of seven taut, geographically diverse stories . . . Le could be the next big thing [and] the opening story, 'Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, ' goes a good distance to proving it." --Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

"So engaging, so unequivocally well done, [The Boat] is sure to appeal to any fan of good writing. From the opening tale, it's hard not to be giddy. ['Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice'] is a brilliantly self-conscious and humorous slice of the writing life, which doubles as a poignant story about fathers and sons and family tragedies. . . . Things only get better from there. Nam Le is a chameleon of voices and points of view, leading the reader through the experiences of an older man, a disillusioned young woman, a boy on the cusp of adulthood, and a teenage girl. The Boat takes us all over the world with fantastic verisimilitude. . . . 'Halflead Bay' is an enviable achievement-an adolescent's battle to find courage as his life begins to turn upside down, the story developed with perfect suspense. . . . And the title story offers urgency, poignancy and heartbreaking tragedy. As if the stories themselves weren't enough to make The Boat a worthy summer read, the skill of the author is a spectacle to behold. He manages to avoid so many pitfalls. He doesn't shy away from stark and disturbing images, for example, yet he doesn't rely on the grotesque to create effective writing. The reader can sense his personal investment in the work, but the stories aren't even close to self-indulgent. It's enough to give a person a literary crush. Each story is dark and deep, exquisitely constructed and beautifully told. Nam Le is a studied, competent and graceful writer, and The Boat is both a contemporary treasure and a harbinger of g...

The seven stories in Nam Le's masterful collection take us across the globe, guiding us to the heart of what it means to be human. From the slums of Colombia to Iowa City and from the streets of Tehran to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, here are thrilling versatile tales that herald the arrival of a remarkable new writer.