Book Review:The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam

The Headmaster's Wager

Title:THE HEADMASTER'S WAGER: A NOVEL by Vincent Lam
Published August 14, 2012; Hogarth
Genre: historical fiction
Rating: 5/5

"Tricks, Mr. Cho? Isn't this a mah-jong table?" said Percival, as he began to wash the tiles. "The only tricks are those of luck. Two hundred per player, then?"

"If you want to play, let's play." Cho looked up from under his eyeshade. (ch. 9)

About the book: Percival Chen, headmaster of an English language academy in Cholon, Vietnam in the mid 1960s, decides to wager a large sum of money in a mah-jong game, putting his school in jeopardy if he should lose.

The stakes are high - the winning pot plus a young Vietnamese woman are part of the bet. Percival, a Chinese who believes in the traditional ways, always dreams of one day returning to China, his homeland, and tries to raise his teenage son Dai Jai in the old fashioned way - urging him to always show respect by staying within the Chinese culture and not marrying outside of that culture. Dai Jai has been seen in the company of a Vietnamese girl, however, one of his classmates.

When Dai Jai leads an illegal protest at the school to defy the government's new rule that his father's school teach the Vietnamese language as well as English, Percival sends Dai Jai off to Shanghai to prevent him from being jailed for the offense and being conscripted into the Vietnamese army.

What changes life for Percival happens after he sends his son away to China and after he wins the high stakes mah-jong game and the Vietnamese girl along with it. Percival falls in love with the Vietnamese girl he won in the bet and his formerly circumscribed life slowly begins to change. Events escalate and Percival's life is affected dramatically, by the girl as much as by the war in Vietnam, the American presence there, and by the tumultuous political changes in China that affect his son Dai Jai.

My comments: The book revolves around the personality of the headmaster and the changes that personal circumstances and war have on his outlook on life. Vincent Lam has created an unforgettable character in Percival Chen, the headmaster, who made me alternately frustrated and anxious throughout the book.

Percival's naivete and his strict adherence to the old traditions almost lead to his undoing and you can say that many of the tragedies in his life are as much his own fault as that of the war and the political upheavals around him. Percival navigates rough waters and at the end of the book, I wanted to read more about this interesting fictional character.

About the author: VINCENT LAM is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam, and was born in Canada. He is an emergency physician in Toronto and a Lecturer at the University of Toronto. His first book, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. He co-authored The Flu Pandemic and You, a guide to influenza pandemics.

I won a copy of this book.

Book Review: The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

Title: The Lotus Eaters: A Novel
Author: Tatjana Soli
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (December 21, 2010)
Genre: fiction
Source:  TLC Book Tours

Summary: The novel is set during the Vietnam War, a combination of adventure, romance and history, with some subtle political commentary. Helen, an American photographer working for Life magazine, has decided to stay in Saigon at the end of the war with wounded fellow photographer, Linh, even though the victorious North Vietnamese soldiers are entering the city and there is danger for Americans and South Vietnamese alike.

The book takes us in flashbacks to Helen's arrival in Vietnam 10 years earlier as a photographer, her doomed love affair with fellow photographer Sam Darrow, and her subsequent relationship with Linh, another photographer who is a former North Vietnamese defector to the south.

Comments: Two love stories, the first due to the urgency and stress of war, and the second because of proximity and shared experiences. In the beginning, Helen relies on Darrow for information and to help her as a photographer of the war. Her love for Linh comes later, after more time and experience in Vietnam. 
The book is also a commentary on the Vietnam War, through stories about the soldiers, their skirmishes, relationships with the Vietnamese, positive and negative. I assume they are based on the the author's research on real events.

The monk shook his head and poured tea.

"He is only a simple monk. He is afraid for the Westerners, that you will lose your way by interfering with Vietnam's destiny. (ch. 9)

Title, The Lotus Eaters: The title is arresting. especially for those who know Tennyson's poem of the same name, describing the voyages of Ulysses and his band of warriors who are tempted by the sleep-inducing lotus and the people of the land they discover, to remain and never leave the place. The title though may not refer to the Vietnamese in the war, who, on both sides, were far from being drugged as the title would suggest. The title may more appropriately refer to the Americans in the war, and to Helen, who refuses to leave Vietnam, wanting more and more of the heady war experience, reluctant to leave and let go.

Easy to read, I thought the writing could have been more tightly edited, less wordy. It tends to ramble in its descriptions. It would have had a greater impact and punch if it were less so. The content though is first rate and gives the reader a deeper sense of those controversial years of the war.

Objective rating: 4.25 out of 5. 

Book Giveaway: Click here to read an interview with the author and to enter the book giveaway.

Book tour stops: http://tlcbooktours.com/

© Harvee Lau 2011

Novels of Vietnam: The Lotus Eaters and The Man from Saigon

I was impressed that two novels on the Vietnam War have been published by authors who were not present in the war but who did enough research and interviews to write credible war stories set in Vietnam.  The novels feature two women in the war, one  a reporter in The Man from Saigon: A Novel by Marti Leimbach and the other a photographer in The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli, both printed 2010.

I started reading them both and realized from the author's information and book description that the writers were creating the story from their imagination, (great!) using of course a lot of research material from books, news reports, maybe even interviews. I like historical fiction but the Vietnam War is still so new that, to me, novels about the war really aren't yet in that category. In other words, I lost interest in the books. I think I would have preferred novels based on the experiences of real people.

However, the two novels are popular and selling well. Maybe many years down the road, writers can fictionalize the experiences of real people in the war, which they can't do now, as such persons, many still alive, might not enjoy being the subject of fiction.

UPDATE ON THE LOTUS EATERS: I have, since writing this post, interviewed Tatjana Soli and posted an interview with the author, here. For me, Soli's research and familiarity with the subject and those who endured the war put a new light on her book.

From my updated Jan. 20 review of The Lotus Eaters: The title is arresting. especially for those who know Tennyson's poem of the same name, describing the voyages of Ulysses and his band of warriors who are tempted by the sleep-inducing lotus and the people of the land they discover, to remain and never leave the place. The title though may not refer to the Vietnamese in the war, who, on both sides, were far from being drugged as the title would suggest. The title may more appropriately refer to the Americans in the war, and to Helen, who refuses to leave Vietnam, wanting more and more of the heady war experience, reluctant to leave and let go.

Easy to read, I thought the writing could have been more tightly edited, less wordy. It tends to ramble in its descriptions. It would have had a greater impact and punch if it were less so. The content though is first rate and gives the reader a deeper sense of those controversial years of the war.