Book Review

Book: If You Lived Here: a novel by Dan Sachs
Finished: September 2009
Pages: 321
Challenges:
** Summer Reading Challenge ** Read & Review ** Read Your Name ** A-Z Challenge ** TBR 2009 **

First Sentence: "I'd guess that Marinos have been burying Rivenbarks for seventy years."

Barnes & Noble Synopsis

Forty-two-year-old Shelley Marino's desperate yearning for a child has led her to one of the only doors still open to her: foreign adoption. It is a decision that strains and ultimately shatters her relationship with her husband, Martin—the veteran of an Asian war who cannot reconcile what Shelley wants with what he knows about the world. But it unites her with Mai, who emigrated from Vietnam decades ago and has now acquired the accoutrement's of the American dream in an effort to dull the memory of the tragedy that drove her from her homeland. As a powerful friendship is forged, two women embark on a life-altering journey to the world Mai left behind—to confront the stark realities of a painful past and embrace the promise of the future.

This was a beautifully written book.
I connected with the characters immediately and could truly feel the heartbreak that Shelley felt at not having a child.
And Mai--what deep heartbreak her story invokes--of a time and country steeped in the aftermath of war.
Martin--poor Martin. Locked within a world where he just cannot share the memories he has of his time in Vietnam during the war. Memories which make him who he is--and because of the lack of ability to open up, drives his wife to make decisions without him.

Sach's depiction of modern Vietnam, in contrast to the war torn Vietnam were lyrical and allowed me to actually paint a picture in my mind of what she was describing as I was reading. I was not able to put this book down at times.
But this story is not all about heartbreak. No, it ultimately a book of healing and hope

Passage (page 143) :
We fly in from the east, and Vietnam reaches out to us. I have never seen my country from the air before. At least, not from so far above. Once, when I was twelve or thirteen, our teachers led the class on a hike up Ba Vi Mountain. We were Hanoi children living in the countryside to avoid the bombs falling on the city. Whenever our parents had a chance, they would bicycle out to the village to visit. Most of the time, though, we were on our own, supervised by anxious teachers who couldn't keep track of so many charges......at the top of the mountain, we ate a picnic of boiled manioc, dried fish, and jackfruit picked from a tree. From where we stood, our teachers pointed out the bomb craters that ripped a zigzag line across the earth. "See, the American government is cruel", Teacher Lam shouted. "Dropping bombs on children and farmers. But they won't ever win this war!" We children chanted and cheered. From the top of Ba Vi, we could just make out the scattered clusters of simple homes, the swooping roofs of pagodas, neatly planted sugarcane fields, and farmers with their water buffaloes plodding through the rice paddies. It seemed so cruel that a pilot flying overhead would drop a bomb on all of that.