STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA

Short stories examine lives shaped by the Vietnamese refugee experience.

Lam and his family fled Vietnam in April, 1975, when he was just 11 years old. While the stories in this rich, complex collection cover a wide swath of subjects, this autobiography informs his characters’ feelings, their relationships to family, friends, employers, and homelands past and present. In “This Isle Is Full of Noises,” Lam begins by describing an island in the Gulf of Thailand that features makeshift tombstones and a grief-stricken woman. Nearby, two boys obliviously look to the clouds and see “catfish in mango sauce” and “roast chicken in lemongrass and chili pepper.” Death is everywhere, but hunger is more persistent. This land is a stopover for refugees of the Vietnam War. Once in America, one of these boys, given the American name of Koala (he was born Cao Le Y-Bang), tells an overly interested professor about the death of his younger brother on their journey West. The professor is, above all, entertained. Lam’s stories are filled with moments in which characters living in the U.S. are forced to reckon with history often too painful to recall, occasionally slipping into a past they never realized they were running away from. Lam’s inventive narrative styles add to the distance his characters feel from the world around them. “October Laments” is told through social media comments, videos, and flashbacks. “Love in the Time of the Beer Bug” features a son narrating the divorce of his parents as if it’s a boxing match. The book’s final—and most emotionally impactful—story, “The Tree of Life,” uses a funeral eulogy to tell the story of a remarkable mother, wife, and humanitarian. The unnamed narrator, the deceased’s child, describes how she lived and the good that was in her heart, saying “she was always an active agent in the face of calamity”—which, Lam suggests, is levied upon all who escape home in search of a better life.

 Wide-ranging tales united by narrators with shared histories and questions of belonging.