The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Amiee Phan

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On one of my many interweb travels for book recommendations this book caught my eye, I hadn’t read anything highlighting Vietnamese heritage and I thought I’d give it a go.

Spanning three generations, The Reeducation of Cherry Truong depicts one Vietnamese family’s escape from their homeland to seek a better life. Through letters and altering points of view - mainly focused on the women of the family, Phan slowly uncovers to the reader the many hardships of each family member in this family drama of lies and deceit.

Slow to start, I found this book to be very difficult to get immersed in. I was interested to see where the paths of this family went, from Vietnam to Malaysia and later France and America. The circumstances resulted in many characters’ unhappiness but I can’t help but feel like the abrupt, and choppy writing style added to my icky mood while reading. The overall tone of the novel was very stoic. Normally, I am a huge fan of multi-point of view stories, but here I felt the bouncing around didn’t bounce fast enough. Cherry, who in the title appears to be the main character, was overshadowed by her mean-spirited, elder relatives. I even debated putting it down but I’d already invested a week in the book so I managed to stick through to the end. The last quarter peaked my interest, but just as I was getting invested in the present day story-line  and finally learning more about Cherry as a character, the novel was coming to an end. Overall, disappointed. :( 2/5 stars.