Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Great movie - not for everyone. May 15, 2008
DJR (Washington State USA)
Ms. March was entrancing and the photography was superb. It's R rated with reason, and a fairly hard R in my opinion but there is really no way around that if you're true to the book which is probably historically accurate. I would recommend the book as well.
 wowed March 24, 2008
Melanie Ivanoff (Nashville, TN United States)
A little book, barely 100 pages, packed with so much emotion and imagery i don't even know how to describe it. It is intense, in a way i haven't read in a while. Technically it is a story of a very poor French teenager, in Vietnam in the 1920's, who takes as her lover a wealthy Chinese man. Character-wise, he doesn't seem much more than a boy himself, though he is in his late 20's. But we get so much more information about the girl's life than we do about her affair. We hear about her mother, essentially a crazy woman, about both her brothers and their lives and deaths. The girl, who never gives her name, is weirdly detached from everyone but seems to be able to understand people deeply. The descriptions are lush and exotic. It seems to be a novel full of yearning and need.
Sumptuous story September 25, 2007
spilla (Philadelphia)
The prose is stark at times, making this classic all the more intriguing. The narrator seems at once affected and numb, young but not naive. It is said to be a slice of the actual author's life, and certainly it seems to have been written from a place of truth and pain. The movie differs greatly from the book and is enjoyable as its own entity, but if you liked the film, read the original -- much more affecting.
This one's artistic. June 22, 2007
Shalla DeGuzman (United States)
After watching the movie, I just had to read the book. Some say, the book is always better than the movie, in this case though both book and movie are beautiful, but each in their own way.
The book draws so much more depth and power (which is of course only hinted in the movie). It is written with a foreign musicality to it. Sentences are structured in ways that communicate the main character's unusual background--a French girl living in prewar Indochina. The way it's structured takes the reader into the poetic, romantic and exotic mind of the narrator.
This is more literary, experimental (sure) and if you're looking for a romance novel, this ain't it. This one's artistic.
Lost and lonely in colonial life May 25, 2007
Rain Bird (Kingston, Jamaica)
This is a novel about two lonely people - but obviously it's autobiographical, about an intense love affair between a quietly assertive 15 year-old and a Chinese man twice her age. The characters are weary, weeping, exhausted by the heat, by the failure of their dreams. The lovers are beautiful and erotic, but to me the most powerful and intense character is the girl's mother - determined, sad, loving and fiercely loved. I also loved the descriptions of the river, flowing on uncaring. The oppressive heat overwhelms and weakens the characters. The story has the atmosphere of a Graham Greene novel, without the politics. I have never seen the movie, but fear it may be soft porn.
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