The House on Dream Street

September 4, 2000
Sachs calls the bustling Hanoi thoroughfare where she lived in the early 1990s "Dream Street" because of the prevalence there of the city's most sought-after motor bike--the Honda Dream. During the nine transformative years over which she has visited and lived in Vietnam, the "sleek and elegant" Dream, and others of its ilk, muscled out the ubiquitous bicycle. Her memoir covers the time from her initial plunge into the country, as a touring backpacker in 1989, to her triumphant return in 1998 with the husband and son her Vietnamese friends had long prodded her to obtain (even the cyclo driver who first ferried her to "Dream Street" announced her as "Twenty-nine years old. Not married yet"). Most of this engrossing book is devoted to detailing the blissful and exhausting six months Sachs spent settling into a corner of Hanoi in 1992. A journalist who has written for Mother Jones and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sachs deftly conveys the strange circumstance of being an American walking "comfortably through the streets of Hanoi." Her first Vietnam--the war-torn country she knew from TV--haunts her. She feels compelled to apologize when she meets an injured Vietnamese veteran, and is perplexed when she encounters people who suffered terrible losses in the war who harbor no ill will. However, Sachs is careful not to dwell too much in the past. The real joy in her work is the engaging street-level view of Hanoi that she provides: of a run-in with two men who strongly desire to sing ABBA songs to her; of the social life of the neighborhood tea stall and the warm and gossipy grandmother who runs it; and the effects of the vacillating economy on her new friends. In moments like these--and there are many of them--Sachs bravely renders Vietnam through fresh eyes. Agent, Sarah Lazin.

September 15, 2000
Yet another American goes to Asia for a year or so and must write about the experience. This time the trip is to Hanoi, Vietnam, where Sachs (journalism and Vietnamese literature, Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington) makes the usual observations: people staring at her, the difficulties of the language, the natives speaking poor English but wanting her to teach them, the strange food served to her, and the kindness she finds. She also has the requisite romantic encounter. The author makes much of being in former enemy territory, though other Asian countries have also been enemies of the United States. She also makes too much of feeling at home even though she stays only six months, goes back to the United States for a year, and then returns to Hanoi for another six months or so. Nevertheless, Sachs is an engaging and sensitive writer who tells her story ably. Recommended for larger public libraries.--Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Community Coll., Garden City, NY

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2000
For a long time after the war, Americans weren't allowed to travel to Vietnam. It was still, in American minds, an enemy country. Once visas were offered in the 1990s, an American woman turns up in Hanoi to begin an acquaintance with Vietnam and the people who would be her hosts. Sachs offers many impressions of a Vietnam, modern yet still steeped in Oriental culture and tradition. To her Western eyes, the changes in Vietnam are most apparent in the changes in her friends, who mainly seem to be concentrating on succeeding in the eclectic mix of creeping capitalism and communism. Although the Vietnamese have yet to come to harmony with their struggling economy, they do seem to have stopped seeing themselves as victims of an American war. Throughout this memoir, the hospitality of her Vietnamese friends is the glue that unites this westerner with this still foreign but friendly people.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)