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    Short Girls: A Novel
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    Short Girls: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Short Girls: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    Short Girls: A Novel

    Written by Bich Minh Nguyen

    Narrated by Alice H. Kennedy

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Van and Linny Luong are temperamental opposites. Diligent, unassuming Van has found her calling as an immigration lawyer in the midwestern suburbs, but no one knows that her picture-perfect marriage has suddenly evaporated. Her younger sister, Linny, fashion-forward and socially adept, lives in Chicago where she has drifted into a dead-end affair with a married man. Though both women feel untethered and burdened by a secret, they've never been able to confide in each other.

    But then, after nearly thirty years in the U.S., their eccentric, invention-obsessed father decides to take the citizenship oath-a rite of passage he hopes will improve the prospects of his most prized creation, the "Luong Arm," an instrument to help short people grasp objects that are out of reach. When Van and Linny reluctantly heed the summons home they end up having to plan a celebration for him, replete with cha gio egg rolls and encounters with old friends from years past. In the time warp of a childhood home unaltered since their mother's death and insulated by the same Vietnamese American community they grew up with, Van and Linny find they are bound by much more than the duties of culture and family history, or their aging father's demands and whims. As they chart the uncertainty that has defined them, as well as the bitter irony of their romantic straits, Van and Linny discover in their common cause a new, enduring connection that sees them through the host of surprises to come.

    Bich Minh Nguyen was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "a writer to watch, a tremendous talent" for her debut memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, and her charm and shrewd powers of observation are on brilliant display in this first novel. By turns deeply moving, wickedly urbane, and utterly entertaining, Short Girls chronicles the pitfalls and triumphs that govern all family lives. Nguyen's insights into the complexities of duty, culture, and ambition often shared by the children of immigrants make Van and Linny's story fresh and unforgettable - a true American tale for our time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 23, 2009
    ISBN9781423391067
    Unavailable
    Short Girls: A Novel
    Author

    Bich Minh Nguyen

    Bich Minh Nguyen teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University. She lives with her husband, the novelist Porter Shreve, in West Lafayette, Indiana and Chicago.

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    Reviews for Short Girls

    3.5/5

    80 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Van and Linny are sisters whose parents have immigrated from Vietnam to Michigan. The novel alternates between the stories of the two sisters. Both have relationship issues of different sorts and problems that might show up in any novel. Within the plot, however, is a theme about acceptance and what it means to be American, along with the theme of family relationships. While I enjoyed the novel, I did find it tedious after a while. I was hoping for more introspection about being the children of immigrants, but that often got buried into mundane wanderings about the men in the sisters' lives. Perhaps it was just me, but I also sometimes had problems keeping the chronology in order; especially in the beginning, the time frames switched frequently and with little warning.
    • 4/5
      I really identified with Van, the older, studious sister, in this book about culture, identity, family, and love.

    • 3/5
      Short Girls is an OK book and a somewhat entertaining read, but it's a pretty stereotypical children of immigrants story without any edge that gives it texture or depth -- definitely not Amy Tan or Junot Diaz. Van and Linny are two estranged sisters, daughters of Vietnamese immigrants, who are brought together in the course of the book by difficulties in their romantic relationships. Van, the older, achieving, lawyer sister is deserted by her husband Miles, a 4th-generation Chinese-American lawyer, who is far more sophisticated than she. Linny, the somewhat rebellious younger daughter, finds herself in an affair with a married man. When they go home for their father's citizenship celebration, they begin to confide in one another. We learn nothing about the parents' lives in Vietnam, very little about the Vietnamese community in the Midwest (both girls escape from it as fast as they can), and the characters seem more soap-opera-ish than compelling. Honestly, I was quite disappointed -- I was hoping for some insight into this community. For that, I would recommend Andrew Pham's Catfish and Mandala. This is a pretty run-of-the-mill story of American middle class 20-somethings.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the sisters who are the short girls, Linny and Van. The author paints a defined picture of each as she struggles with upheaval in her life. They are very different and Nguyen explores how they diverged as they were growing up, the daughters of Vietnamese immigrants in Michigan and how that experience affected each sister very differently. They now live away from their hometown where their father, a widower remains. He is about to become a citizen and they return home for the celebration. I loved the depiction of the father who has invented, among other things, the Luong arm which is a necessity for a short person. The ending was weak which was a dissapointment.
    • 3/5
      Bich Minh Nguyen's Short Girls is a story of Vietnamese, second-generation immigrants Linny and Van Luong and their family. Their father, a loner and inventor, holding them at arms length, and their familial history is obscured by stories and silence. The story is broken into alternating chapters about each young woman, though written in a point of view that is more like an observer, though each woman's inner thoughts are revealed."The Luongs had always done this, scratching at each other's words as much out of habit as anything. But this time when Thuy Luong had told her husband to go sleep in the basement "like a dog"he stayed there instead of slinking back upstairs." (Page 4 of ARC)Van is an immigration lawyer with the "perfect" life, or at least that's how it seems to her sister, Linny. Linny, on the other hand, has a free life where she can act and do as she desires on a whim without responsibility -- at least that's how it seems to her sister. The tension between these sisters is vivid, but in many ways could have been better executed without the internal dialogue complaints about the other sister at every turn or before each memory surfaced to demonstrate their differences."She would have set the glass to shattering, sailed through someone else's house, used up all the space that humans never reached." (Page 53 of ARC)Van's world has been falling apart slowly, and now she is set adrift without a compass and without a husband. She struggles to keep her drama to herself and to overcome the emptiness in her home and her life. Meanwhile, Linny has to come to grips with her errors and her drifting life to make her dreams come true, while at the same time support her sister and her father, who continues to struggle to find success."Linny put in long hours experimenting shadows and liners, trying to make her eyes look bigger, deeper-set, less Asian. She painted plum colors up to her eyebrows and applied three coats of mascara. She ran peroxide-soaked cotton balls through her hair to create caramel highlights." (Page 58 of ARC)Nguyen's Short Girls is a look at racial discrimination, immigrants looking for their place in a society that welcomes and shuns them, and finding once self amid the melting pot and one's own family, while trying to accept your family's own faults and ideas about success and love.
    • 4/5
      A good while back, I reviewed "Free Food for Millionaires" by Min Jin Lee, a book which explored the experiences of a first generation Korean American. I was struck by the parallels between that book and this debut novel from Bich Minh Nguyen. Granted, the former focuses on Korean immigrants and the latter on Vietnamese, but both novels are rich with the struggle of American-born children of immigrants.This novel centres on two sisters, Van and Linh Luong. Van is the elder daughter, an immigration lawyer, serious and with a marriage in difficulty. Linny is the younger, carefree, working as a cook, and trying to end an affair with a married man. Both sisters are dealing with crises but keep their distance from the other. At the centre of their lives is their widowed father. He has been obsessed with the short stature of Vietnamese people his whole life and uses all his inventive mind to create the Luong Arm, a device to help shorter people reach items on top shelves. In order to futher his inventions, he decides to become a naturalised citizen of the U.S. and enter a reality TV show for inventors. It is while begrudgingly attending to their father that the two sisters realise that they are both at crossroads in their lives. Drawing on each other in way that they haven't done since childhood, they find the strength to start living new lives. Nguyen has written a simple novel that somehow captures the readers' interest. The two sisters are real characters who will resonate with a lot of female readers. The author switches deftly between the present and the past to tell this tale, but maybe the characters realness is their failing, as somehow this novel fails to linger to any great degree.
    • 4/5
      Short Girls is a quick but engrossing read. This book, about two second generation Vietnamese American sisters, tells the story of their coming to know themselves and realize the value of family and tradition. The sisters, though distant and on diverging paths in life, are brought together through both crisis and celebration, both in their personal and professional lives. Whether or not you identify with Van, the lawyer whose even temper and drive to achieve doesn't suffice to hide her fragility, or her capricious and irresponsible sister Linny, you will find the characters well developed and quite likable. Much of the story revolves around the girls sense of obligation to their widower father, and stories of his obsession with height, or really the families lack of it. Current dealings with him, the inner and outer conflicts they create, and memories of their deceased mother set much of the emotional tone. The novel does end on a hopeful note and is another in the genre of asian american fiction or quasi-memoir that I would recommend.
    • 3/5
      Van and Linny Luong are sisters who were born in America to Vietnamese immigrants. Their mother has died, and though they both feel strong ties to their hapless but domineering father, they don’t like to spend time with him. The sisters are estranged from each other as they have very little in common. This story is about family ties and how these sisters reconnect.The story is interesting, especially the insight into Vietnamese culture, and what it is like to be an immigrant. Van is a lawyer who specializes in immigration law and this point of view was insightful. I expected more humor from this book. The title and the cover make it sound like it will be lighthearted, something it definitely was not. It was actually depressing in parts because Van is going through a painful divorce and Linny is dating a married man.The story did end on an uplifting note as the sisters learn to appreciate each other and their heritage.
    • 4/5
      First I'd like to say that even though the label "Chick Lit" will be put on this book, I'd like to lose the label. Mostly because this book should be viewed as literature.This is the immigrant's tale of many Americans. It is told from the alternating narrative of second generation American sisters, whose parents had came from Vietnam. Don't expect a hard hitting action story, but a strong book that works with well developed characters as they try to survive in post-9/11 America.
    • 3/5
      "Short Girls" is a wonderful debut novel about two Vietnamese sisters and their father struggling in modern America. The oldest daughter Van escapes through overachieving: she works hard in law school, then in her career as a immigration lawyer, and in her marriage to a firmly implanted Chinese American man who happens to be a perfectionist. Younger sister Linny, the rebel, is her opposite: she relies on her beauty and her sense of fashion to eventually land a job in a catering company, only to jeopardize that job by having an affair with the husband of one of her clients.This novel is about discovering ones sense of self in an "alien" land, and is reflected in the title "Short Girls." In a country that seems to be mostly tall people, their father, Mr. Luong constantly reminds his children that they are short people growing up in a world designed for those taller than themselves and that they have to work harder than other people to overcome the world's bias. Stylistically, Nguyen seems to have a wonderful command of language and is able to pack a lot of emotion into her tight prose. Alternating between the point-of-view of each sister, the reader is able to follow each character as she sorts out her recently troubled life and the author does a wonderful job of firmly establishing each character's unique voice. And while the plot itself is nothing exciting, the story is well worth the time.
    • 4/5
      This is first and foremost a story about two sisters and their (developing a) relationship, and second a story about immigration and assimilation. Nguyen manages to reveal the sisters' past without writing a lumbering exposition, and their experiences growing up are woven into the overall narrative without being intrusive. The description of their developing relationship and better understanding of each other is what makes this a particularly good story - the two have such different personalities that it seems like they would never have anything in common, but Nguyen makes the transition not only believable, but plausible and even probable. There is much talk about the agonies of being short, and I think those parts could have been cut down quite a bit. It is a fast, sometimes sad, sometimes funny read - Nguyen's writing is very readable and she seems a natural story-teller. I must admit I chuckled knowingly once or twice at the descriptions of Vietnamese culture; my best friend's husband is Vietnamese, and some of the things Nguyen describes (food, social interaction, etc.) struck me as very true indeed!
    • 3/5
      The ReviewFrom the author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, comes a novel about two Vietnamese sisters who are U.S. Citizens born of immigrant parents. The girls, have gone in completely different directions with their lives. Their relationship is strained and it is seemingly difficult, at best, for them to connect in a loving and real way. The girls have lost their mother, however their father is an inventor who eventually gains his U.S. citizenship. Van, the older sister, struggles to express herself when it comes to her personal life and interpersonal relationships. Despite this, she has found success as an attorney. Linny is experiencing the opposite scenario in a floundering career and incomplete education. She never married and is involved in a relationship with a married man. Their father lives alone in their family home working on his inventions targeted to aid short people. In reading this overall story, I compliment Nguyen on her clean, concise writing ability She is most certainly a talented and promising writer. She provides a well described story of an immigrant’s family life in the United States. This includes the influence of American culture on their genetic/historic one… how they blend together and yet contradict one another. She also provides insight into the prejudices that naturalized citizens and the children they have given birth to in the United States. I tended to gravitate towards Van’s story within the novel. I felt most compelled by her disintegrating marriage and the way that her estranged husband treated her. The story lines of her sister and father held little, if any interest for me. I felt contempt for Linny as she continued her affair with a married man and living aimlessly. I held compassion and pity for their father who was trapped within his own little world. On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:” Despite this writer’s obvious talent and penchant for writing, this story just didn’t hold my attention to the degree that I would have liked it to. This novel hosts a solid story of one family’s legacy in America. However, it just didn’t grab me and hold my attention the entire way through. With that being said, Nguyen shall get my rating, genre: Fiction:General, of 7 OUT OF 10. This book may maintain more of an impact for those who can better relate to the influence of their family’s immigration to the United States.
    • 4/5
      I have to confess that when I first started reading “Short Girls,” I thought it was just another examination of the inter-generational struggles faced by families recently immigrated to the United States. As this is a vein that has been mined so wonderfully by Amy Tan over the years, it was not clear that this novel—which concentrates on the Vietnamese rather than the Chinese experience—would be anything special.Fortunately, I kept reading and I am glad that I did. While Bich Nguyen’s book certainly does consider the joys and strains of the relationships between parents and children caught between two cultures, her real focus is the interaction between the two sisters of the title. Conditioned from birth to both resent and embrace their status as “short girls”—a continuing metaphor for their standing as people who will always be at least slightly outside the mainstream— Linny and Van face their challenge and pursue their lives in very different ways. As a consequence, they grow apart and barely speak to one another after high school. Much of the action in the novel involves the sometimes heartbreaking sequence of events that ultimately bring them back together.I enjoyed this book a great deal, largely because I really grew to care about both of the sisters. Nguyen—who seems to have written from personal experience—has drawn very distinct and authentic portraits of two women who view the world quite disparately, but share too much history and common genes to ever break apart completely. This is a book about love and loss, fitting in and being estranged, regret and redemption. It is also one that will stay with me for awhile.