Huong's latest novel in translation, Memories of a Pure Spring, is a lengthy story that follows several North Vietnamese characters through the critical turns they make in the first five years after the "American War." They are principally cohorts from the artistic community -- a composer-artistic director and his singer wife, an unfulfilled writer, a deviant painter, a clown-sage -- who, along with ancillary characters such as the singer's younger brother, are trying to find a connection between the past and their present circumstances. It is through their different approaches that the author examines her own relationships and the quandaries she faces as a patriot and artist who has fallen out of favor with the authorities.

Where Huong's meditations have taken her is unclear. As in her previous work, she expresses dismay at the demoralized state of a society abandoning its ideals and giving in to cowardice and materialism. Rather than delve deeply into the hatred, humiliation, fear, and emptiness of her characters, however, the author only skims the surface of their motivations, occasionally dipping into popular psychology to sort through their tangled predicaments. Amid the detailed fragments that comprise the novel, the Western reader may find the message ambiguous and even contradictory -- not a desirable outcome for a work intended for consumption in Europe and America.

The English-language version is readable, albeit dry, with the characters becoming largely indistinguishable in language and manner. As with an earlier work by the same translators, Novel without a Name (1995; see WLT 69:3, p. 653), Memories lacks the flavor of Vietnam. Readers should note Nina McPherson's admission that the Vietnamese manuscript has been edited, although the parameters of the adaptation are undefined. The publisher has included a brief "Reader's Guide" with discussion questions at the end of the story, an appendage the reader can overlook with no great sense of loss.

To truly understand Duong Thu Huong, one must not get carried away by the hype generated by the Western press and acknowledge that the author is more complex than the translators and reviewers have chosen to depict her. If taken at her word, she does not seek notoriety, but only a chance to deliver her message of a Vietnam hungry for freedom and a spiritual revolution. In Memories of a Pure Spring she appears to be trapped in the past, struggling without a vision for the future.

Vietnam's history since the end of the war a quarter of a century ago has been one long succession of disappointed dreams and barely concealed tears. Duong Thu Huong has become the most poignant chronicler of the country's disillusionment. Her Paradise of the Blind tells of a corrupt party official wrecking the life of his young niece with his own petty concerns. Novel without a Name is a riveting account of the war and its numbing effects on ordinary people, who were far less enthused about the great patriotic struggle than official propaganda suggested. Novel landed Huong in jail for seven months in 1991, and since then she has been unable to publish her books in Vietnam, although she continues to live and write in Hanoi.

Now comes Memories of a Pure Spring, whose characters seek what people everywhere long for: beauty, love, some meaning in their everyday lives. But in Huong's Vietnam the rewards are too often laced with bitterness. Hung, the main character, like Huong herself in real life, was the head of a wartime musical troupe, sent to the front to entertain the soldiers. After the war he falls afoul of the authorities and is unable to have his music performed anywhere. His marriage to the beautiful singer Suong starts to unravel. The frustrated artist in him reacts angrily to his fate. But his bid for freedom only leads to opium addiction and prostitutes with venereal disease, mirroring the self-destruction of a nation.

This latest work does not have the impact of Novel without a Name, which was held together by the horror of the war. Memories of a Pure Spring is more diffuse, chronicling the fragmented lives of a family drifting through a Vietnam run by soulless ideologues. Still, Huong writes beautifully, seeking in the depths of memory the artistic vision reflected in the pure spring of the title. When Suong's husband is sent to a prison camp, she descends into hell, traveling deep into the mountains to find him starving and beaten by the guards. She reclaims him by singing for the prisoners--even as Huong herself persists in writing for a people still far from free.

The first time the heroine in Duong Thu Huong's latest novel, Memories of a Pure Spring, betrays her husband; her main sensation is the coldness on her back of the rose petals her lover has spread on the bed sheets. Later, after one of the characters grazes his hand as he ties a noose to a tree, he goes back into the house to dress the wound with iodine before coming out and hanging himself. This is exquisite writing that constantly hovers on the border of pain, with a dark irony that threatens to weep.

Vietnam's history since the end of the war a quarter of a century ago has been one long succession of disappointed dreams and barely concealed tears. Duong Thu Huong has become the most poignant chronicler of the country's disillusionment. Her Paradise of the Blind tells of a corrupt party official wrecking the life of his young niece with his own petty concerns. Novel without a Name is a riveting account of the war and its numbing effects on ordinary people, who were far less enthused about the great patriotic struggle than official propaganda suggested. Novel landed Huong in jail for seven months in 1991, and since then she has been unable to publish her books in Vietnam, although she continues to live and write in Hanoi.

Now comes Memories of a Pure Spring (Picador; 340 pages), whose characters seek what people everywhere long for: beauty, love, some meaning in their everyday lives. But in Huong's Vietnam the rewards are too often laced with bitterness. Hung, the main character, like Huong herself in real life, was the head of a wartime musical troupe, sent to the front to entertain the soldiers. After the war he falls afoul of the authorities and is unable to have his music performed. His marriage to the beautiful singer Suong starts to unravel. The frustrated artist in him reacts angrily to his fate. But his bid for freedom only leads to opium addiction and prostitutes with venereal disease, mirroring the self-destruction of a nation.

This latest work does not have the impact of Novel without a Name. While that book was held together by the horror of war, Memories of a Pure Spring is more diffuse, chronicling the fragmented lives of a family drifting through a Vietnam run by soulless ideologues. Still, Huong writes beautifully, seeking in the depths of memory the artistic vision reflected in the book's poetic title. When Hung is sent to a prison camp, his wife travels deep into the mountains to find him starving and beaten by the guards. She reclaims him by singing for the prisoners-even as Huong herself persists in writing for a people still far from free.

"Dogeaters" by Hagedorn:

By naming her novel Dogeaters, the pejorative for Filipino coined by Americans to make fun of the natives who often served up dogs the way one serves chickens and pigs, Jessica Hagedorn announced her no-holds-barred intent. Her fictional appraisal of the land of her birth examined every strata of its society and put everything on the table, including bits and pieces like the dog eating days that many Filipinos prefer to hide or forget. The result was a tangled tale of the long-lingering aftertaste of colonization that left people torn between the old and new world, connected by the hype of the media and the glamour of the movies This new, less family connected society was filled with as much color and drama as any movie.

Dogeaters, the novel, demands that attention must be paid in order to follow the frequently interrupted fragments of its jaggedly disparate but intertwined stories. Not that your attention is likely to wander from Michael Greif's stunningly animated crazy quilt of Philippine history. It is one of the most stylish productions currently to be seen on the stage, with its fifteen-member cast representing the crème-de-la-crème of Filipino-American actors, many in multiple roles.

Though the author has streamlined her book to focus the year 1982 which marked the beginning of the end of the regime of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Dogeaters remains big and busy. It often feels like a musical and has a decidedly Brechtian flavor.
Throughout Dogeaters, there is a constant shifting of facts. Historical memories are often destroyed or deliberately misplaced, paralleling what happened to the Philippines' history when other countries suppressed and destroyed their language and religious beliefs during the colonial times. Hagedorn eloquently illustrates an image of a nation that has been shredded and put back together so many times by colonization that some of the pieces are still missing. Here, the pieces are replaced by tsismis (gossip) because there is a need for the characters to become whole. American influenced radio, television, and movie theaters can be found in every segment of the novel, but it is uncensored tsismis that ties the characters to their history. One disgruntled character's final words in the novel mimic the cry of a fragmented nation for the return of its history: