A novel about personal and political revelations in 1990 Vietnam. This latest from Pearl, a sequel to Hearts on Fire, Paris 1968 (2018), opens on a happy occasion in Paris. American Robert Samberg has recently closed a deal to make himself the owner of the largest string of radio stations in America, making him a genuine media tycoon. The novel's opening sections effectively remind readers of the strangely innocent, transitional time it was in geopolitics. The Vietnam War is long over, but trouble is brewing in a world that's about to enter a new age of terrorism (Samberg takes a phone call from an American foreign secretary official who talks about having trouble with Saddam Hussein and Kuwait, for instance). Samberg is summoned to Washington by Secretary of State James Baker and asked to undertake a mission to help the U.S. government restore relations with the Vietnamese government. Samberg has a long history with the country. Back in 1968, he had a brief, heartbreaking relationship with a woman named My Hahn, who's since become a rising power in a Vietnamese government that would very much like to normalize political and economic relations with the U.S. Baker and the American foreign policy makers think sending one civilian on an informal mission to test the waters in Vietnam is the way to proceed, and Samberg takes the job despite his reservations. In Vietnam, he encounters My Hahn again and encounters two surprises: They have a son he knew nothing about, and his complex love for Vietnam is still very much alive. The narrative is a miracle of compression; in far fewer than 200 pages, Pearl manages to create two compelling characters in Samberg and My Hahn, atmospherically convey the social and political feel of Vietnam in 1990, and steadily ratchet up the tempo of the plot. The novel succeeds as both a time capsule and an absorbing love story. An interesting tale of love lost and found in two very different Vietnams.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)