The Deuce by Robert Olen Butler

I was very happy to find this book in a second-hand bookshop, because a few years ago in Singpore I had read my flatmate's copy of Olen butler's book of short stories 0140176640 A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. I remembered very little about this book except for its red cover and the fact that I had really enjoyed it - entertaining and yet profound and learn-ful too.

The Deuce was not so enjoyable, and it didn't leave me feeling particularly uplifted, so that was a pain. But then the subject was pretty painful: after the Vietamn war, the six-year-old son of a drug-using Vietnamese bar girl is taken - well, bought actually - by his American ex-G.I. father to grow up in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. His memories as a street kid in Saigon are more vivid than his ten years of alienated existence with his father and his all-white school. Thanh/Tony's experiences only become vivid again when he returns to the streets as a teenage runaway in NYC. Other street people, junk food, child-hookers and terrible horrible kiddie-raping psychopaths become his new world, which is are not my thing, I'm a squeamish and easily depressed reader.

On the other hand, our young hero does find a way to empower himself in all this mess, and comes to friendlier terms with his father, who after all is not such a terrible guy in comparison. In fact, Olen Butler makes the father the mouthpiece for what I considered to be some basic wisdom of the story - So Thanh's relationship with the guy is considerably raised through this experience. It doesn't have an unhappy ending, but not an ecstatic one either. After all, what's done is done.

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