Such a Lovely Little War

Starred review from January 30, 2017
As the child of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife stationed in Saigon in the 1960s, Truong experienced the Vietnam War in a way that few did. In this graphic novel memoir, young Marco and his siblings blithely cross cultures—Vietnamese, French, American—in the midst of a conflict with no clear boundaries. The war creeps up by degrees, from a “lovely little war” of diplomats to a brutal conflict with no justice and no escape. The Truong kids don’t grasp the details—and, unlike the native Vietnamese children, they’re sheltered from most of the violence—but they absorb the war into their daytime games and nighttime anxieties. Meanwhile, Truong’s high-strung mother begins to crumble under the strain. The sometimes spotty narrative jumps between autobiography and history, pulling out to show the political spiderweb that trapped so much of the world in Vietnam. Truong’s bold linework, with spot color that periodically explodes into full watercolor illustrations, brings the era to vibrant life.

The early years of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a child, as rendered by the graphic artist he became.Truong shows his command of both text and visuals, as his boyhood provides a compelling perspective on the beginnings of a war that would have such devastating impacts on Southeast Asia and America alike. The young son of a Vietnamese diplomat and the Frenchwoman that he married, "Marco" initially enjoyed an idyllic life outside Washington, D.C.: "America the Beautiful, like a Peanuts cartoon," he remembers, though the other kids could never get his Asian ethnicity right; they thought he was Chinese or maybe Korean, having never heard of Vietnam. In boyhood games of cowboys or soldiers, he was always the "other." As the war escalated, he found his life disrupted, and his father was reassigned to their homeland. Readers follow young Marco through a visit to his mother's relatives in France to their Saigon return. The turmoil he experienced there paralleled the "quiet war" between his parents and the deeper disturbances that plagued his mother, who had resisted their departure from the States and found her worst fears confirmed. "In Mama's case," he writes, isolation and war set off this terrible mental disorder"--which the author now recognizes as a bipolar condition that was never properly diagnosed and treated. Much of the American involvement and escalation in Vietnam will be familiar to readers, though Truong seems to have no ideological ax to grind, letting the horrors of Agent Orange ("Even today...deformed children are being born because of this poison") and the inability of American forces to compete with the Vietcong "to win the hearts and minds of the population" speak for themselves. The value is in the eyewitness accounts by a young boy who would understand more when he was older and develop the artistry necessary to render what he now understands. A first-rate work of graphic memoir dealing with a pivotal period in modern American history. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 15, 2016

Truong (Give Peace a Chance) experienced part of the Vietnam War as a child, living in Saigon with his Vietnamese diplomat father and patrician French mother. The upper-class family weathers shortages, bombings, and troops everywhere, while the children play at war themselves, even--disturbingly--reenacting with toy figures a Buddhist monk's self-immolation of protest. Despite encroaching chaos and widespread suffering, little Marco doesn't understand how serious the war is or why their parents argue. Moreover, their mother has undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Voice-over narration beyond the family's speech balloons supplies insights from the grown-up author, now wiser and more horrified about how death and disorder accelerate despite optimistic rhetoric and heavy investment of money and men. The art style is attractive, rather blocky simplified realism in two colors, with occasional full-color panoramas. VERDICT Revealing the past fruits of a mishandled American collaboration, the story highlights the complexity of international policies on both personal and political levels. A solid choice for adults and teens interested in history and politics, especially relating to Southeast Asia. See also GB Tran's Vietnamerica.--MC

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