David Joiner’s debut novel LOTUSLAND was originally published ten years ago, and it describes Vietnam from roughly ten years before that. Written for an American audience, the book manages to clearly and quickly explain Vietnam’s cultural idiosyncrasies in the aughts without obstructing the narrative flow. From descriptions of restaurants to the act of lacquer painting, LOTUSLAND admirably serves as an ode to a country that has gone overlooked by American media since the Vietnam War ended. Intriguing descriptions of the country’s various settings abound, as this one describes the view from a moving train: “Beyond them stretched rice paddies pitted and filled with water. Several pits were thirty feet across– bomb craters from the war.” The exploration of Vietnam’s history is the most worthwhile aspect of this novel.
As for the plot, Nathan is a journalist from Ohio who can speak fluent Vietnamese but is barely scraping by—not to mention all the debt on his shoulders. When he meets a woman with pink hair on a train, he becomes smitten. An occasional visual cliché foretells the traditional trajectory of the plot, like this one: “The more he looked at her hair the more its shape came to resemble a rosebud.” Her name is Le, and she offers to be his girlfriend in exchange for help with her visa (along with English lessons). Nathan is a hopeless romantic while Le is an ambitious pragmatist, and she sets clear expectations from the get-go about what their relationship is supposed to be: business.
It’s irritating to watch Nathan struggle to understand this. It would be one thing if this were written in first person, but the close-third narration makes it sound like we’re supposed to side with Nathan as he becomes bitter and rather aggressive after she gives him the cold shoulder. Furthermore, it’s difficult to root for a protagonist who sets himself up for failure by convincing himself he’s in a serious relationship with someone who clearly wants to leave both him and the country. LOTUSLAND’s somewhat unhealthy ties to romance tropes are especially obvious when Nathan says something melodramatic like, “It’s not supposed to end like this.”
Meanwhile, Nathan consistently proves to be a bad friend to Anthony—a very successful real-estate developer who has given Nathan so much help that our protagonist comes across as selfish when leading Anthony on or being rude on a date with someone who actually wants a relationship. Not like Anthony’s a great guy; he has major issues, and his relationship with Nathan is compellingly complex. Their dialogue is especially good—in fact, every character is well-drawn—but it often seems that most of our sympathies are expected to lie with someone who doesn’t deserve them. More than once, this reader wondered if LOTUSLAND would be more interesting if it were told from Anthony’s or Le’s perspective—as their conflicts are at least more complicated, their character arcs more dramatic.
This edition includes a Q&A in which Joiner admits that he wanted to shorten the story’s first half and create more time for two particular characters to spend apart. Those edits would help, indeed, as LOTUSLAND feels like two different books stitched together: a romance and a drama. The former’s conflict is resolved much earlier than expected, leaving Le to recede into a very minor role as Anthony comes to the foreground. Granted, the novel’s second half brings up poignant themes about money, power, exploitation, and individual responsibility—but the story feels uneven nonetheless.
Along with a few telegraphed plot twists, a handful of narrative contrivances that make characters’ decisions easier to make, a cheap manipulation in the final chapter that makes us think one way when it’s not so, and some heavy-handed preaching about making sure you do what you love, LOTUSLAND is far from perfect. However, readers who are interested in the history and culture of Vietnam will find much to appreciate here.
~J.S. Gornael for IndieReader