Fake House: Stories Book

The worlds he creates of assholes and screwed up people are so brilliantly banal in the first half of this collection. This book was not well received when it was written, partly because he dared to write about white people and make fun of them a little bit. I refer you to Isabel Thuy Pelaud's discussion of his story 555 for more on the unfairly poor reception it received. I have read most of Linh Dinh's work and this has many of the themes he develops later in his poetry and novels about place, memory, language, and inhumanity. In all of his related work, he is very satirical in his portrayal of the way the Tale of Kiều factors into how elders and men treat women in these stories: "Saigon Pull" and "Hope and Standards." Dinh gives very accurate, though tongue in cheek portrayals of people trying to figure out how to live in Post-War, post normalization with USA Viet Nam, especially in "California Fine View." Some of the stories are experimental and feel disjointed, gesturing to poetry and stretching form. I found two gems I will use for themes I want to develop in my work that are beautiful in the mysteries of our relationships to the dead and the abyss entitled "Western Music" and "The Cave"
The last story "Chopped Steak Mountain" would be a great companion to "In the Field" by Tim O'Brien. I suggest that Dinh offers a corrective and amplification to O'Brien's limits-see my review of The Things They Carried.