SUNRISE IN SAIGON
by Patrick Greenwood
In Greenwood’s debut novel, an American trapped in a loveless marriage travels to Vietnam to meet an intriguing woman he met online.
Jack Kendall is born in 1964, just after the start of the war in Vietnam, and grows up obsessively tracking the trajectory of the conflict and equally obsessed with this mysterious, far-off nation. That fascination never wanes, even into adulthood, and his heart aches whenever he thinks about the nuns and orphans who disappeared during Operation Babylift, a colossal evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States. Despite his success as a technology sales professional, he is profoundly unhappy in his marriage to Silvia, a monstrously selfish woman addicted to drugs, alcohol, and intemperate spending sprees. While surveying online dating profiles, he meets Linh Ngo, a 24-year-old woman—he’s 46 at the time—in Vietnam having struggles of her own, both financial and marital. They enjoy a brief online friendship, Jack sends her some money, and they then lose touch; two years later they reconnect, and Jack resolves to visit Vietnam and meet this woman he believes he can fall in love with. Greenwood chronicles Jack’s relationship with Linh Ngo, one that is rhapsodically romantic but doomed from the start. Meanwhile, Jack invests in a water company and contemplates a permanent move to Vietnam. The author intelligently articulates the indelibly destructive imprint the war left on Vietnam, in particular the suspicions the Vietnamese maintain about not only Americans, but foreign involvement in their affairs in general. At one point, Jack is arrested for “unacceptable public behavior,” which essentially means exploiting a Vietnamese woman’s vulnerability.
However, despite the plot’s brevity, the novel still feels unfocused, as it’s splintered into too many incongruent subplots. Jack battles a “slimly underhanded group of lawyers and bankers” with ties to the criminal underworld in China and Japan as well as a child-trafficking ring led by a former military adviser to the North Vietnamese. Next thing you know, he’s desperately trying to find those nuns involved in Operation Babylift. Subplots like these seem gratuitously grafted onto the main storyline—Jack’s love of Linh Ngo, for example. Also, Jack’s infatuation with Vietnam never fully makes sense—he doesn’t seem all that knowledgeable about the nation or its history, nor does he try to learn the language. One can’t help but wonder if his love of Vietnam is closer to a fetish, an exotic counterpoint to his generally dreary life in America. Still, the principal failing of the book is the author’s writing style, which lacks emotional heft despite being clearly designed to pluck the reader’s heartstrings. Jack’s self-musings seem to be written for a teenage readership: “Should I hug her? Kiss her? Shake her hand? I don’t know! I just need to let it happen.” This overcharged earnestness makes it difficult for one to take seriously Jack’s entry into a torrid and illicit international affair.Greeting-card sentimentality and a jumbled plot undermine Greenwood’s otherwise ambitious novel.