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A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
by Robert Olen Butler
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (1993-06-01)
ISBN: 0140176640
EAN: 9780140176643
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Paperback - 272 pages
SKU: 109063
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Excellent condition!
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In a collection of bittersweet stories about Vietnamese expatriates living in the American South, Butler blends Vietnamese folklore and American realities, lyric, dreamlike passages and comic turns, to create a panoramic tapestry of a people struggling to find a balance between their hearts and their hopes.
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Amazon.com Review
The Vietnam War continues to play itself out in fiction, autobiography, and history books, but no American author has captured the experiences of the Vietnamese themselves--and caught their voices--more tellingly than Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. The 15 stories collected here, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. Butler's literary ventriloquism, as he mines the experiences of a people with a great literary tradition of their own, is uncanny; but his talents as a writer of universal truths is what makes this a collection for the ages.
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Customer Reviews
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Powerful
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-09-07
I enjoyed this collection of stories about Vietnamese living in America after the war. A haunting, vivid protrayal of lives uprooted by conflict.
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A Mixed Bag of Short Stories
Rating  (3)
Date: 2009-12-14
This retrospective collection of fiction stories revolve around the Vietnamese and their multitude of experiences after the War: as immigrants, as business people, as mothers/fathers. Butler does a good job of capturing thoughts and feelings, and I was completely surprised to find out the he is actually Caucasian. Many of the characters are vividly written, and Butler does a good job of expressing the hardships of the characters and creating a sense of vitality around them.
With this short story collection, some of the stories are good while others are poor. Some of the stories are extremely poignant and portray the frustrations and challenges of the Vietnamese successfully. The story "Cricket" was one of those for me - a father trying to reconnect with his son who has picked up American values. Although, some stories just cannot escape this dab, gloomy tone and atmosphere and were uninteresting.
Overall I would suggest it. The stories that are great deserve 4-5 stars but that is only about half the book, hence the 3 star rating.
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An Insight Into a Different Culture
Rating  (4)
Date: 2009-11-27
I probably would not have selected this book to read on my own since I don't usually read short stories, but I am glad that it was required reading for a leisure learning class I took. Butler really opens ones eyes to the Vietnamese people and their culture here in Louisiana.
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An awesome collection
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-06-17
What a wonderful collection of stories. The voices in these stories are profound, real, and continue to echo after the last page has been closed. A great way to get a feel for the war in Vietnam--a way that is unique in its perspective.
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Very Engaging
Rating (4)
Date: 2009-03-04
These are short stories about various people from Viet Nam who have come to America and more specifically to Louisiana.
I'm certainly no expert on the people of Viet Nam and am thus not qualified to comment on how well Butler captured their spirits.
I did enjoy most of the stories very much. Many of them are very short (6 to 15 pages) and are simply odd little snapshots of life. The narrators of the stories are varied. They are men, women, old and young.
At first I found the stories to be interesting but not that powerful. About halfway through the book I felt that the cumulative effect was significant. For these stories, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.
My favorite short story in the collection is "The American Couple" which is an exception in the book because it is more than 80 pages in length.
I very much appreciated this collection and feel that Butler treated the subjects with respect and affection.
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