Product Description

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World
One of the Los Angeles Times’ Favorite Books of the Year
One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian
A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

“Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the ­foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective. . . . Now we can add Andrew Pham’s Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Searing . . . vivid–and harrowing . . . Here is war and life through the eyes of a Vietnamese everyman.”
—Seattle Times

Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham’s family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War.
Told in dazzling chapters that alternate between events in the past and those closer to the present, The Eaves of Heaven brilliantly re-creates the trials of everyday life in Vietnam as endured by one man, from the fall of Hanoi and the collapse of French colonialism to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon. Pham offers a rare portal into a lost world as he chronicles Thong Van Pham’s heartbreaks, triumphs, and bizarre reversals of fortune, whether as a South Vietnamese soldier pinned down by enemy fire, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese under brutal interrogation, or a refugee desperately trying to escape Vietnam after the last American helicopter has abandoned Saigon. This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71371 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-23
• Released on: 2009-06-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307381217
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In a narrative set between the years of 1940 and 1976, Pham (Catfish and Mandala) recounts the story of his once wealthy father, Thong Van Pham, who lived through the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during WWII, and the Vietnam War. Alternating between his father's distant past and more recent events, the narrative take readers on a haunting trip through time and space. This technique lends a soothing, dreamlike quality to a story of upheaval, war, famine and the brutality his father underwent following a childhood of privilege (And that strange year, the last of the good years, all things were granted. Heaven laid the seal of prosperity upon our land. We were blessed with the most bountiful harvest in memory). For those not familiar with Vietnamese history, Pham does an admirable job of recounting the complex cast of characters and the political machinations of the various groups vying for power over the years. In the end, he also gracefully delivers a heartfelt family history. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Martha Sherrill

In 1802, a war hero named Hao Pham was awarded a vast tract of land in the fertile flatlands in the north of Vietnam. He'd won several battles that had led to the unification of his country. For this, he became the lord of a large manor with thousands of peasants and lived out his days in supreme comfort. A string of male descendants succeeded him, each becoming richer and more powerful than the last. Under French colonial rule, the Pham estates expanded further.

The Eaves of Heaven describes the gradual undoing of this vast and elaborate dynasty, the cataclysmic disintegration of a country, and the series of dramatic misfortunes that befell the great-great-great-grandson of Hao. Poised to inherit everything, Thong Pham instead lost it all, as Andrew X. Pham, his son, recounts in this gorgeously written book. But this is not ultimately a story of loss and upheaval, nor is it simply a retelling of Vietnam's war-torn history from a Vietnamese point of view. Many other books have ably covered that ground. The Eaves of Heaven is something entirely new: an effort to recapture the moments of beauty and transcendence that emerged from these events.

Andrew Pham covered some of this ground previously in his acclaimed travel memoir, Catfish and Mandala, but in telling the life story of his own father, he seems to have risen to a new level of quiet and powerful storytelling. Aware that his father's story, which he tells in his father's voice, is strong enough to require no enhancements, he is restrained, never sensationalizing.

The Eaves of Heaven is built from a series of short vignettes -- some sweet, some horrifying -- which are not recounted in chronological sequence, but linked in a narrative that darts nimbly across time, lingering on haunting scenes of brutality and violence as well as of beauty and love. Around every corner there are startling discoveries and juxtapositions caused by the shuffled chronology: misery followed by a gentle love scene or sumptuously described food. (Andrew Pham once was a food critic, and his book can be painful to read if, like me, you don't live within driving distance of a good Vietnamese restaurant.)

It's the absence of chronology that gives Thong's story its magic and depth, and allows it to be sustained by his observations of the ephemeral and the descriptions of unforgettable characters. Colorful personalities appear -- cousins, aunties, half-siblings, stepmothers, neighbors -- and reappear, sometimes to perish or be executed, victims of the crushing internecine and geopolitical conflicts that Vietnam endured for decades. The country becomes a character, too, like a person being slowly tortured and dismembered. When we encounter the orphan boy that the 9-year-old Thong and his cousin found in a barn during the Great Famine of 1944, it's impossible not to think of him as a kind of human stand-in for Vietnam itself:

"One afternoon, when Tan and I were playing hide-and-seek, we found a boy bundled in a blanket beneath a pile of hay at the back corner of the barn. Shriveled and bloated with starvation, he looked like some sort of bug, all head and belly, big-eyed and heaving ribs, almost hairless, semi-conscious and possibly mute. He was past talking. It appeared he had crawled into the stable to die."

The following year, there were so many dying people on the roadsides of the family estate that decaying body parts became a common sight and were transformed into macabre playthings.

"I remembered kicking a skull. There were many. My friends and I picked one that was detached from a body. It was round enough to roll like the grapefruits we once used. Bouncing across the dirt, it had no human feature. Ravens had picked the eye sockets clean."

Deprivation and suffering finally trickled up to the aristocrats, causing Thong and his family to walk away from their ancestral homeland, taking only one suitcase each, after the Vietnamese communists had been given the northern half of the country by the Geneva Accords in 1954. In the South, living on the bleak outskirts of Saigon, the Phams were reduced to desperation, first running a dark and greasy noodle shop that failed, then a country inn that became a popular whorehouse. Thong's father, once a dashing playboy with fine clothes and a nobleman's languid manner, degenerated into a hopeless opium addict who never managed to rise from his lounge or emerge from his haze.

A bookish and unathletic boy who felt awkward next to his polished, debauched father, Thong found comfort in the classroom and dreamed of being a scholar and teacher. His mother encouraged him, and together they buried a champagne bottle in her private garden on the estate in the north -- to be opened upon his passing of middle school graduation exams.

Thong's mother is the nourishing spirit of the book, a refined woman who left behind a treasure of good feeling and noble ideas to help carry her son through. Just 31 when she died, she hovered over his life for years after, a kind of angel who guided Thong and kept him alive.

"Mother had taught me that the eaves of heaven had a way of turning in cycles, of dealing both blows and recompenses. For every devastating flood, there followed a bountiful crop. For every long stretch of flawless days, there waited a mighty storm just below the horizon."

By the story's end, Thong has witnessed cruelty, waste and government corruption, and has endured prison, torture, and the deaths and humiliations of one friend after another. All he has left are the things inside him: the books he's read, the memories of the people he loves and hopes to see again, the strength and wisdom he's gained from deprivation. He has lost everything, and yet so much remains.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
All critics agreed that The Eaves of Heaven, written in short, eloquent vignettes that move back and forth in time, is one of the best memoirs of this period in Vietnam’s history written from the Vietnamese point of view. Indeed, it offers a much-needed perspective in the United States, which often thinks of “Vietnam” as a painful episode in its own history rather than another nation’s. But some reviewers, impressed by Pham’s ability to write in his father’s voice without sentimentality, went even further. They called The Eaves of Heaven a classic among memoirs and compared it with classic texts that address the timeless themes of violence and war. The Eaves of Heaven is a book that will greatly appeal to a wide variety of readers.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

My favorite book of the Summer for story, language, emotion, and more
Sometimes a reader is privileged enough to read a book in which the words, sentences, and stories just wash over and envelop you, like a gentle beach wave. This is such a book. I enjoyed Pham's earlier "Catfish" so much that I awaited this latest book of family stories with great anticipation; and I was rewarded. Whether I read this on the subway, a bench, or at home, I was immediately transported to Vietnam, where Pham skillfully describes the villages and cities, the triumphs, pains, tastes, loves, corruptions, kindnesses, terrors and fears of his father's early life (or perhaps lives.) Along the way, I learned more about Vietnamese history and village life than I ever knew before. Pham orders the chapters so that the reader moves back and forth between the decades of his father's childhood and adulthood, all the while progressing to the point we all expect, the fall of Saigon to the VC.

As his grandmother taught, the eaves of heaven dealt good and bad in cycles. Devastating floods brought death but fertile harvests, childbirths brought the risks of a mother's death, and lovely days brought future storms. The lyrical sentences allow you to nearly taste the peach melba ice cream eaten during a courtship, but also let you live the terror of re-education and being pinned down by VC troops in a life or death firefight. The pure childhood enjoyment of eating treats and having cricket fights is a pleasure to read. But one will never again care for the fabled glory of the French Foreign Legion after finishing this book. I finished the final chapter just as NBC began to telecast the Miss Universe pageant from a colorful and cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang, and all I could do is ponder the tribulations of this memoir and the amnesia of the telecast. Luckily this book captures a forgotten past with all the aspects that the eaves leave in shadows.

Read!
The Eaves of Heaven is about Thong Pham's life. His son, Andrew Pham, writes in the first person as if it were his father telling his story. In the introduction Andrew writes "I have lent his [Thong Pham's] life stories my words...The perspectives and sentiments within are his." Hence this book is Thing Pham's memoir, distilled as stories he told his son, and further distilled as Andrew Pham recounts them again.

Thong Pham witnessed the French occupation of Vietnam, the Japanese occupation during World War II and the American war after World War II ended. His story is one of migration that those displaced by war experience. First he moved from his ancestral land in the Red River Delta (North Vietnam) to Hanoi, and later to Saigon. Recounted are also times when work demands pulled him away from his home and family.

Each chapter recounts an event that as a collection bring out the idyllic life of a Vietnamese child born into aristocracy, the horrors of armed conflict, the helplessness of forced migration, the plight of serving in the armed forces, and the hardships of being captured by the enemy. With these backdrops, the narrative interweaves human actions (both base and noble) that give this book its soul. As a collection of family stories, this book is a treasure trove for the Pham family.

Pham's attention to detail effectively transports the reader "on location" so one can truly feel the rain, see the sunrise and appreciate the events are they unfold. The chapters are not in chronological order, and I found myself constantly referring to prior chapters and prior events to get a better understanding of which events had transpired, and which ones were to come. When I re-read the book, I'll read the chapters so the events narrated are in chronological order.

For those not familiar with Vietnamese history, Pham provides adequate background to help follow the political events that transpire in Thong's life. The Eaves of Heaven is more about human feelings and emotion than about the political turmoil that serves as its backdrop. One realizes that armed conflict and forced migration bring out the best and worst in all of us.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

fascinating biography that look at the history of Viet Nam
From 1940 to1976, Viet Nam was in a constant state of war that impacted the people. Andrew X. Pham provides the biography of his father Thong Van Pham, who lived through the three plus decades of war starting with the Japanese invasion of the French occupied region during WW II through the fight for independent from the French and finally the war over the South against the United States. As a child Thong lived an upper crust life being born to a wealthy family. Over the years of war, famine and abuse, the family fortune vanished and consequently the life style.

This is a fascinating biography that also serves as a deep look at the history of Viet Nam. The author rotates his father's life with recent events that brings a harrowing feel as the reader gains a sense of the outcome resulting from the years of turbulence. Well written, readers will marvel at Mr. Pham's capture of the impact of power struggles on everyday people.

Harriet Klausner