What do you think?
Rate this book
The Deep Green Sea
In The Deep Green Sea, Robert Olen Butler has created a memorable and incandescent love story between Tien, a contemporary Vietnamese woman orphaned in 1975, when the city finally fell to the Communists, and Ben, a Vietnam veteran who returns from America to a war-torn land, seeking closure and a measure of peace. Bit by bit they learn more of each other's pasts. Secrets are Ben's love affair with a Vietnamese prostitute in 1966; Tien's mixed racial heritage and her abandonment by her bar-girl mother, who feared retribution from the North Vietnamese for having given birth to one of the hated "children of dust." In Butler's hands, what follows conjures the stuff of classical tragedy and also achieves a classic reconciliation of once-warring cultures. Infused equally with eroticism and with Butler's deep and abiding reverence for Vietnamese myth and history, The Deep Green Sea is a landmark work in the literature of love and war.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 1998
10 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Robert Olen Butler
86 books452 followers“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
November 12, 2008
I've already written a review at Barnes & Noble.com, but what you need to know is this:
Buy this book and read it for the LANGUAGE--for the poetic ways in which a tumultuous love affair turns into the things myths, fables, are made of. Though some have criticized this novel for being "too predictable", I would say it has an uncanny sense of "inevitability"--the excitement is not in the ending, but in how Mr. Butler gets you there. And get you there, he does!
Buy this book and read it for the LANGUAGE--for the poetic ways in which a tumultuous love affair turns into the things myths, fables, are made of. Though some have criticized this novel for being "too predictable", I would say it has an uncanny sense of "inevitability"--the excitement is not in the ending, but in how Mr. Butler gets you there. And get you there, he does!
March 19, 2010
DAMN IT NO.
spoiler alert: exactly what you think is going to happen, from the first fucking page, happens, and then the book is immediately over.
spoiler alert: exactly what you think is going to happen, from the first fucking page, happens, and then the book is immediately over.
November 8, 2010
WARNING, SPOILERS:
Though the racial and historical dynamics could've been dealt with better--though Butler certainly gives it a good try--what I found most interesting about the book is the revelation of incest at the end of it. The two have fallen in love only to discover they are father and daughter. A book could play this for laughs or disgust, etc, but instead, it shows the true anguish and love of the two antagonists and the accident of history and biology that allowed them to meet years after the Vietnam war and be instinctually drawn to each other and then fall in love. The masterful lyrical writing from the POV of both characters NEVER allows us to take their tragedy anything but a hundred percent seriously. I only wish the book had more sophisticated values so they could've transcended the incest taboo together. They met as adults, so no power dynamic of father/daughter is involved. She can forgive him for what could be seen as his exploitation of her mother b/c her mother was living on sex work and he was her regular--she was faithful to him and the resources he provided her and thus he allowed her to free herself from the crap shoot of a new client every night. The power dynamic of white older ex-military and younger Vietnamese in a state job would still have to be explored if they were to have a relationship, but I see nothing wrong with them having one as long as they don't have children. Still, despite this failure of the book to transcend social convention, it is heartbreaking in its immediate onslaught of poetic language re:their love affair.
Though the racial and historical dynamics could've been dealt with better--though Butler certainly gives it a good try--what I found most interesting about the book is the revelation of incest at the end of it. The two have fallen in love only to discover they are father and daughter. A book could play this for laughs or disgust, etc, but instead, it shows the true anguish and love of the two antagonists and the accident of history and biology that allowed them to meet years after the Vietnam war and be instinctually drawn to each other and then fall in love. The masterful lyrical writing from the POV of both characters NEVER allows us to take their tragedy anything but a hundred percent seriously. I only wish the book had more sophisticated values so they could've transcended the incest taboo together. They met as adults, so no power dynamic of father/daughter is involved. She can forgive him for what could be seen as his exploitation of her mother b/c her mother was living on sex work and he was her regular--she was faithful to him and the resources he provided her and thus he allowed her to free herself from the crap shoot of a new client every night. The power dynamic of white older ex-military and younger Vietnamese in a state job would still have to be explored if they were to have a relationship, but I see nothing wrong with them having one as long as they don't have children. Still, despite this failure of the book to transcend social convention, it is heartbreaking in its immediate onslaught of poetic language re:their love affair.
January 17, 2018
What a masterpiece this is! The story of a Vietnam vet going back to Vietnam and falling in love with a Vietnamese girl is so wonderfully written---from both perspectives. Yet there are ghosts to exorcise and doubts to be resolved before the seemingly perfect match can move on. My best book of the year.
November 11, 2017
This is a story of a man, a woman, and a past of dragons, princesses, and war. It is the story of overwhelming love.
The story is told in alternating voices, weaving the thoughts and love first from one and then from the other into a magical tale that ends at a temple, with jasmine and hope.
Lovely, lush writing.
The story is told in alternating voices, weaving the thoughts and love first from one and then from the other into a magical tale that ends at a temple, with jasmine and hope.
Lovely, lush writing.
November 6, 2013
This struck me as a very unusual book. Told from the point of view of two characters, it switches back and forth from the present to the past, weaving legend, family lore, memory and perception together in a most charming way.
The present-day story moves very slowly and is described in exquisite detail, with attention to sensuality and internal puzzlement. The back stories cover three generations of Vietnamese and American people, drawing in the character of each country and the social issues pertaining to each family over time. The elements of myth and family history not only enrich the story but become integral to its resolution at the end, which I found rather ingenious on the part of the author.
The language in the book is beautiful, tender and picturesque. As someone who has never travelled to the East, I oftentimes felt literally transported to the various locations, which is the mark of a skilled writer. Also, while the intimate scenes were frequent and graphic, I never found them gratuitous or crass. Rather, they added to the characters and the plot by moving the action forward on a literal and metaphorical level.
Finally, as a writer myself, I took note of the author's clever use of background descriptions. It seemed to me that nothing was superfluous; even the mention of a cock crowing in the distance contributed meaning to the action taking place in the foreground. Such attention to detail made the reading of this book both a pleasure and a lesson in literary style.
The present-day story moves very slowly and is described in exquisite detail, with attention to sensuality and internal puzzlement. The back stories cover three generations of Vietnamese and American people, drawing in the character of each country and the social issues pertaining to each family over time. The elements of myth and family history not only enrich the story but become integral to its resolution at the end, which I found rather ingenious on the part of the author.
The language in the book is beautiful, tender and picturesque. As someone who has never travelled to the East, I oftentimes felt literally transported to the various locations, which is the mark of a skilled writer. Also, while the intimate scenes were frequent and graphic, I never found them gratuitous or crass. Rather, they added to the characters and the plot by moving the action forward on a literal and metaphorical level.
Finally, as a writer myself, I took note of the author's clever use of background descriptions. It seemed to me that nothing was superfluous; even the mention of a cock crowing in the distance contributed meaning to the action taking place in the foreground. Such attention to detail made the reading of this book both a pleasure and a lesson in literary style.
September 24, 2011
This book was absolutely amazing. The alternating male/female narrative really puts the reader into this very complex and compelling "situation" in a way that makes the reader uncomfortable and excited and anxious and angry all at the same time. It is a difficult novel to put down once you get started and the sensuality of this novel as a whole is, in my opinion, unmatched by anything else out there today.
January 3, 2017
This book made me feel gross from the beginning. It feels like a very long inner monologue that is mostly narrating a sex scene from the two different points of view. If I had to read the phrase "touching my secret place" one more time, ugh. If I thought that was unsettling, the end was even worse.
February 23, 2010
Definitely a compelling, erotic story. Simply written, and unsurprising in its denouement, what was interesting was knowing the tragic (and unsavory) nature of the love story from almost the beginning, and yet being drawn into it nonetheless.
February 16, 2013
I loved this book. Yes, the subject matter was disturbing, and yes, the denouement was forseen, but the language, the "pillow talk" between these doomed lovers lit up every page. An erotic, tragic duet, and literary pas de deux that, like all art should be, is not for everyone's taste.
August 19, 2019
Of course the form is impressive and interesting, BUT I am repulsed to read about a white, American, male's fantasy about what a Vietnamese woman thinks and feels about sex and sexuality. It is inappropriate to appropriate another's culture like this.
December 20, 2024
Years ago, I read - and loved - Robert Olen Butler's
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
, a collection of stories inspired by the author's time in Vietnam. I thought that it was rightfully awarded the Pulitzer; the stories were deep and humane, and the writing lyrical and touching.
The Deep Green Sea, one of his later novels, sadly fails to recapture the magic I felt while reading these stories - it's not as much the fault of the book itself, but rather my own for not being able to stop comparing it to its predecessor. While reading, I couldn't help but think that the novel could have easily been trimmed down without losing much of its impact - the story of two unlikely lovers and their respective pasts would fit splendidly in the collection I loved, and didn't quite work for me as a standalone work. I felt that I couldn't stop seeing it as a part of a larger whole; despite its lyrical prose, the actual story felt too thin as to warrant it an entire book. Despite its lyrical prose, the plot dragged on; and when the denouement eventually came, it failed to impact me emotionally, mostly because the build-up to it was clearly telegraphed and we, the readers, were served a classic case of too little, too late.
To sum up: The Deep Green Sea, while not terrible, is no A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain. Go read that one instead.
The Deep Green Sea, one of his later novels, sadly fails to recapture the magic I felt while reading these stories - it's not as much the fault of the book itself, but rather my own for not being able to stop comparing it to its predecessor. While reading, I couldn't help but think that the novel could have easily been trimmed down without losing much of its impact - the story of two unlikely lovers and their respective pasts would fit splendidly in the collection I loved, and didn't quite work for me as a standalone work. I felt that I couldn't stop seeing it as a part of a larger whole; despite its lyrical prose, the actual story felt too thin as to warrant it an entire book. Despite its lyrical prose, the plot dragged on; and when the denouement eventually came, it failed to impact me emotionally, mostly because the build-up to it was clearly telegraphed and we, the readers, were served a classic case of too little, too late.
To sum up: The Deep Green Sea, while not terrible, is no A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain. Go read that one instead.
February 10, 2021
One of the most amazing books I have read in quite a while. An intricately simple plot of a passionate love that was unknowingly ill-fated from its outset. A surprise ending to what seemed to be a predictable outcome.
July 1, 2019
Beautifully written.
January 2, 2021
There was good, poetic writing about sexuality and attraction, but the plot was very thin and predictable.
June 20, 2021
Very beautiful novel
July 12, 2022
def my least favorite book
June 11, 2024
Obvious foreshadowing leads to a predictable ending, in a plot that can only be described as a train wreck.
November 14, 2024
I really like the back and forth narration between the two characters.
November 8, 2015
This is the only book by Robert Olen Butler that I have read, and I enjoyed it very much. I particularly enjoyed the back-and-forth between the first person narratives of the two main characters. I thought he handled them both with a great deal of sensitivity and that the novel as a whole was a powerful exploration of the way the gravity our longing so often pulls us, through the vehicle of a Love that knows no rules, into unexpected contact with our most deeply held pain. It is staggering to contemplate that Love could bring us to such a precipice, but what else could bring us to the point from which there is no way forward but through grace itself?
June 15, 2010
A return to Vietnam story, this book tells the story of a love affair between a young Vietnamese woman and a Vietnam veteran in the early 1990s. There is some beautifully detailed writing, as the author tells the story moment by erotic moment, first in one character's voice and then the other's. It is an allegory for the American experience in Vietnam. The narrative is like a fairy tale or a myth, poetic and larger than life, but told with lots of emotional detail, which makes it a compelling read.
July 12, 2015
This book was beautiful and disturbing altogether. I felt the intimacy shared between Tien and Ben (disregarding the minor details of incest) was written with immense tenderness and was eloquently erotic. The hues and shares of the lifestyle and culture of Vietnam made me feel I really grasped the setting without details and landmarks being shoved down my throat. Even with its bizarre plot, I take this book like a dark poem.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2022
Although he's a Pulitzer Prize winner, I hadn't heard of Robert Olen Butler before accidentally coming across his book on writing (From Where You Dream). He has an intriguing writing method and I was curious to check out his fiction. This is the first I've read and it is amazing!
Set in Vietnam, this is a truly stunning and beautifully written love story. It's also so exciting to find an author who's written lots of books. I have many more to look forward to!
Set in Vietnam, this is a truly stunning and beautifully written love story. It's also so exciting to find an author who's written lots of books. I have many more to look forward to!
August 29, 2008
This book won a pulitzer prize, which led me to beleive that the first 80 pages would NOT be a sex scene. But, as is often in life, I was wrong. The writing was good, but the fact that I felt uncomfortable reading it on a plane (where people could read over my shoulder) means it onlt gets four stars.
September 23, 2010
This is one of the very best novels I have ever read, though one could say that of most of Robert Olen Butler's work.
Butler writes like Ingrid Bergman looks. The stunning beauty of his prose alone make the book worth reading. The story of the main characters, Tien and Ben is at once deep and profoundly moving, as well as tragic on a Greek scale.
Butler writes like Ingrid Bergman looks. The stunning beauty of his prose alone make the book worth reading. The story of the main characters, Tien and Ben is at once deep and profoundly moving, as well as tragic on a Greek scale.
January 29, 2011
Robert Olen Butler is greatly influenced by Viet Nam. This is a creepy tale of a former GI and a woman he meets and befriends. This book did not live up to my expectations which were pretty high as I loved A Good Smell from a Strange Mountain. A short story collection by Butler.
April 9, 2011
I feel like writing to the library to ask that they take this book out of their collection.
Lots of sex details and very creepy. The author is very talented. I think he misused his talent in this book. It seems like the reviewers here either love the book or hate it.
Lots of sex details and very creepy. The author is very talented. I think he misused his talent in this book. It seems like the reviewers here either love the book or hate it.
December 27, 2015
A short but extremely powerful tale of a love that is at once pure and tarnished. The prose is absorbing and poignant and haunting. An exceptionally interesting story, but not recommended for those with a Puritanical bent.
March 8, 2008
Beautiful prose and pacing.
December 27, 2013
Would have liked to rate it higher, but the story itself doesn't seem to warrant it. His writing is really beautiful, I'm really looking forward to picking up some of his others.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews