'Short Girls' relays sisterly angst, cultural heritage that ties family together

Bich Minh Nguyen, author of 'Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir' writes first novel

August 01, 2009|By Conan Putnam, SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE

"Short Girls"

By Bich Minh Nguyen

Viking, $26, 292 pages

It is somehow fitting that the expertly honed plot of "Short Girls," Bich Minh Nguyen's lively, engaging novel of sisterly angst and the cultural heritage that ties the family together, should begin with the breakup of a marriage and an invitation to a citizenship party. Van Luong, 28, abandoned in a bloated suburban tract-manse by her husband of three years, receives a call from her father, Dinh Luong, inviting her to his swearing-in as a United States citizen:

"After twenty-eight years of stubbornness her father was finally taking his oath of citizenship. ... To celebrate, he was throwing a party in the old style, the way all of the Vietnamese families in their town used to gather in the late seventies and eighties, finding relief in their free-flowing beer and language."

As an immigration lawyer, Van has no problem helping her father complete forms, get fingerprinted and make the appointment for his citizenship test. It's her duty, as the eldest daughter, to take care of her aging parent. She doesn't even have a problem with his reason for becoming a citizen, which is to qualify to be a contestant on a reality television show to publicize his invention: the Luong Arm, a device that helps short people reach high shelves in their homes. What she can't bear is the thought of trying to keep her marital split a secret from her younger sister, Linny, when she sees her at the party. Estranged since the death of their mother nine years ago, the sisters have barely spoken, much less confided details of their private lives.

Linny Luong, 26, dropped out of college and fled to Chicago after their mom died. Fond of short skirts, jeans and chic thrift-shop finds, she wouldn't be caught dead in the professional attire that Van favors. Also, unlike her "needy, guy-directed" older sister, Linny prefers fleeting affairs to the stability of long-term relationships.

The interplay between the sisters' narrative perspectives lacks depth, perhaps because Nguyen is moving not only between points of view but points in time. It's a lot for a first novel to set out to achieve, but the risk pays off. The most impressive aspect of "Short Girls" is the way that Nguyen maintains the forward momentum of the sisters' narratives while moving backward in time. Each sister is haunted in her own way by their family history.

Linny, just as conflicted about her parents' assimilation into American culture as her older sister but less uptight, has never been one to let confusion or even stunningly lucid moments of grief interfere with living her life. Driving home for her father's citizenship celebration, "She thought of ghosts, spirits or whatever form her mother was supposed to be now, conjured whenever she wrote another recipe or wondered what her mother had thought, their first months in Michigan, when she couldn't find any decent rice in the stores."

The novel's pitch-perfect sense of place is another of its charms. Nguyen's clear-eyed take on the Chicago landscape, while not ignoring the harsh climate, locates its jewel-like quality. In a few vivid, spare strokes, she captures the unique and strangely beautiful juxtaposition of water and sky that forms the city's backdrop. "Even on a day like this one, the second week of April, cold and gray, the buildings seemed to collect the gathered gleam from Lake Michigan and throw the light back into the air."

Despite the unfortunate, chick-lit tone of its title, "Short Girls" is an exceptional debut, funny, insightful and literary, with lots to mull over after you put it down.


Conan Putnam has written for the Seattle Review.