Coming in at Number 4: The Sympathizer

So my timing’s off. I really needed this book to last until the end of the year, but it was good enough that down the stretch I finished it early. No loss. I feel all the more enriched for it, and that leaves room for one more…

In the end, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen cracked the top 5 for me, and although I’ve settled in on number 4, it could just as well be number 2 (the current number 2 is a two-way tie). First off, Nguyen’s writing style is beautiful. Rich and full without being overly flowery — he has a good economy with words. Secondly, the story itself is fascinating and well-developed. I could find all kinds of meaning throughout if I looked hard enough, but it didn’t make me feel like an idiot if I didn’t (which is the usual for me). The story carried me along quite well, and the way I was seeing it unfold was just fine with me. This might seem like a strange approach, but I’ve never been good at reading between the lines when asked “what does this really mean?” (and thus my dislike of literature classes that always confronted me with that question). I really liked the way Nguyen developed his characters, especially the way he portrayed the “hero” of the story. There was tragedy and angst and deception and the haunting notion of having to live with one’s choices that built up throughout the story. All good stuff, and very much recommended.

As the year comes to a close, I’m quite glad that I’ve taken this challenge. It’s given me an opportunity to read and experience such a broad spectrum of high-quality books [except The Executioner’s Song]. And now that I have a bit less than a week to go, it’s on to the last Pulitzer for the year, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2017). I’ve kind of avoided it because I have a visceral distaste for injustice, and I know that any book dealing with slavery is going to be filled with it. Still, just by reading the first few pages, it is giving me insight that I may not have had, and as much as I despise the thought of slavery, perhaps a reading of a book like this can push me to an even clearer perspective on it. Whitehead is also one of the few people who have won the Pulitzer for fiction twice (he also won in 2020 for The Nickel Boys), so this book should also open a whole new avenue of quality work for me to read.

Let’s see…