Slander

By Linda Lê

Book Overview

Like author Linda L , the young woman who narrates this novel is from Vietnam and is a writer, a "dirty foreigner writing in French." The narrator has distanced herself not only from Vietnamese society but also from her family. Her story is an exercise in clear-eyed fury revealing three generations of a cursed family. The grandfather was a lunatic the family locked away and declared dead to avoid shame; the father is a failed artist and humiliated cuckold; the mother is a simpering beauty consumed with lust; the uncle is declared insane because of his incestuous love for his sister, who hanged herself. The narrator, on the verge of a profound depression ever since her mother told her she was illegitimate, alternates her story with her uncle's journal. In an acid style burning with compressed lyricism and savage irony, these parallel monologues sketch misfortune's family tree.

Linda L , who traveled at age fourteen from Saigon to France with a wave of "boat people," is one of the leading young novelists on France's brave new literary scene. Slander is L 's fifth--and most celebrated--novel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803279639
• ISBN13: 9780803279636
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

More unusual fare

This book is not one you choose for an easy read. Linda Le writes incredible narratives that challenge the reader to piece together the story. The story she's telling is of a madman who has been locked in an asylum for ten years by his family for having had a love affair with his sister. If you have issues with this story line, read something else. Even if you're able to move beyond your moral qualms with the events of the story and let Le's words absorb you into her riveting novel, you must be prepared to have your assumptions of sanity and insanity challenged. This is not a comforting book about life. It's one that takes you to edges of humanity that we don't often visit and cloaks these events in literary maneuvers that will take your breath away if you let them.I'd recommend this book for those who love strong, forceful writing and who are able to move outside of their own personalities and daily lives to let an unexpected story awake them to other possible interpretations of life.