Book
If I had two lives
Record details
- ISBN: 9781609455217
-
Physical Description:
print
regular print
270 pages ; 21 cm. - Publisher: New York : Europa editions ; 2019.
- Copyright: ©2019
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Young women -- Fiction Friendship -- Fiction Vietnamese Americans -- Fiction |
Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Castlegar Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Castlegar Public Library | FIC ROS (Text) | 35146002135416 | Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 May #1
She was just seven years old when she joined her mother at the military camp in Vietnam. As an energy consultant, her mother had refused to go along with the corrupt systems of government, running afoul of people in power until, by 1993, shelter at the camp became her best option. Through her years at the camp, and then in her new life in New York, the girl would find her mother unknowable, becoming obsessed with the fragmentary story of her mother's life and her own pursuit of the truth. In this debut novel, Rosewood presents with searing clarity the uncertain and confusing world of a child with no one to guide her, followed by the equally confounding scenarios that confront her as a young woman, when she falls for Lilah, a woman whose motives for friendship stem from her own desires. Haunted by her past and uncertain of her future, the young woman must choose a path that will allow her to set her own course in life. A poignant tale of loneliness and love. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews. - ForeWord Magazine Reviews : ForeWord Magazine Reviews 2019 - May/June
Abbigail N. Rosewood's compelling If I Had Two Lives begins in 1990s Vietnam as a young girl is brought to a military camp. The girl's motherâan ambitious reformer who is thwarted by the corrupt Vietnamese power structureâhas been exiled to the camp for her own protection. Bordered by an electric fence, this isolated, decaying French colonial compound becomes the backdrop for the girl's childhood.
The girl, who remains nameless throughout the novel, finds companionship in a soldier assigned to watch over her and her mother. She also befriends another child whose father works in the compound kitchen. The soldier is truly caring, but the child is psychologically troubled, having experienced sexual abuse and abandonment. The twin-like girls form an intense bond, playing in empty prison cells, sharing secrets, and "giving funerals to dead bugs."
At age thirteen, the narrator leaves the camp for the United States, where she lives with a series of relatives. Her mother promises to join her daughter soon, but new causes and more political entanglements keep her in Vietnam. The girl begins college, but her formative experiencesâwhich also include sexual abuseâcause her to remain detached and wary, even of herself.
Ultimately, the constrictions of the past give way to the present. When the narrator becomes involved with Lilah, a woman who resembles her friend from the camp, a curious ménage à trois of eroticism and fertility develops. When she sees a man on the subway who reminds her of the camp soldier, the compulsion to follow him home leads to a healing, meaningful relationship.
Haunting and harrowing, If I Had Two Lives is told with beautiful perception and detail, offering a unique view of late twentieth-century Vietnam and memories that continue to resonate, even in a new world.
© 2019 Foreword Magazine, Inc. All Rights Reserved. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2019 March #2
A woman raised in a Vietnamese military camp must reclaim her identity in this debut novel. In 1997, when she's 7, the unnamed narrator is taken to a military camp where her mother, a reform-minded energy consultant, is hiding from her political enemies. There, the girl forms relationships that will shape the rest of her life. Her mother, engrossed in her mission of bringing electricity to Vietnam, alternately ignores her and berates her. A young soldier assigned to protect the mother and daughter offers the girl emotional support and a nurturing, stable presence. But the girl's most intense relationship is with a friend she refers to only as "the little girl," who is being sexually abused by her father. The narrator happily participates in her friend's fantasies: "My life depended on whatever imagined role the little girl gave me." But a rift forms between the girls when the narrator, now 13, is abruptly whisked to the U.S. In 2012, the narrator works in a cafe in New York a nd constructs facsimiles of her past relationships: She follows a man who reminds her of her soldier, moves into his apartment building, and befriends him. And she falls into an intense, erotically tinged relationship with a woman named Lilah. "I stared at [Lilah's] back, her narrow and boyish hips, and wondered what the little girl might look like as a woman." The narrator agrees to become a surrogate mother for Lilah and her husband, Jon, a decision that ultimately leads her back to Vietnam to confront her past. The novel is an exploration of the way people co-opt others for their own ends, and it's satisfying when the narrator finally gains clarity on the way her life has been warped to reinforce fantasies, both her own and other people's. But the story is filled with clumsy melodrama, with the prose trending a deep, bewildering purple: "The acme of all love was abandonment, the only point at which we would fulfill the promise of immortality, to persist in our love for th o se who are absent, into oblivion." An intriguing premise marred by awkward pacing and an overwrought style. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
