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Thuận: Chinatown (2022, New Directions Publishing Corporation) 5 stars

"An abandoned package is discovered in the Paris Metro: the subway workers suspect it's a …

Hypnotic, Heartbreaking, Hilarious

4 stars

Narrated in one long paragraph (intercut with two pieces written by the narrator), Chinatown is the extraordinary, dreamlike self-analysis and biography of a Vietnamese English teacher in France, exploring her entire life while stuck on a metro train. The narrative skips from era to era, country to country, circling her marriage and the Chinese-Vietnamese husband who vanished from her life a decade earlier. Really tremendous.