Endless Field

by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư

Endless Field is a tale of Mekong Delta natives, marking Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s perceptive insight and sympathy for farmers (and people in general). Love, revenge, nostalgia, regret, and exposure of dark corners of souls permeate the whole story, the characters being thus more real.

Endless Field, made into the 2010 film titled The Floating Lives, has already been translated and published in Korea, China, France, Germany, and Sweden, where it has received much praise.

102 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Nguyễn Ngọc Tư (sinh năm 1976 tại xã Tân Duyệt, huyện Đầm Dơi, tỉnh Cà Mau) là một nữ nhà văn trẻ của Hội nhà văn Việt Nam, được biết đến nhiều nhất bởi tập truyện gây tranh cãi mang tên Cánh đồng bất tận. Tập truyện, dù vậy, đã nhận được giải thưởng của Hội nhà văn Việt Nam năm 2006 và truyện ngắn Cánh đồng bất tận được chuyển thể thành phim điện ảnh cùng tên đạo diễn bởi Nguyễn Phan Quang Bình năm 2010. Hiện cô đang sinh sống và công tác ở Đầm Dơi, Cà Mau.

Tác phẩm
Ngọn đèn không tắt (2000)
Ông ngoại (2001)
Biển người mênh mông (2003)
Giao thừa (tập truyện ngắn, 2003, tái bản 2012)
Nước chảy mây trôi (tập truyện ngắn và ký, 2004)
Cái nhìn khắc khoải
Đau gì như thể (truyện ngắn-giải ba cuộc thi truyện ngắn của báo văn nghệ năm 2004-2005)
Sống chậm thời @ (tản văn, 2006) - đồng tác giả với Lê Thiếu Nhơn
Sầu trên đỉnh Puvan (2007)
Truyện ngắn Nguyễn Ngọc Tư (tập truyện ngắn, 2005)
Cánh đồng bất tận (tập truyện ngắn, 2005)
Tạp văn Nguyễn Ngọc Tư (tạp bút, 2005)
Ngày mai của những ngày mai (tạp bút, 2007)
Gió lẻ và 9 câu chuyện khác (tập truyện ngắn, 2008)
Biển của mỗi người (tạp bút, 2008)
Yêu người ngóng núi (tản văn, 2009)
Khói trời lộng lẫy (tập truyện ngắn, 2010)
Gáy người thì lạnh (tản văn, 2012)
Bánh trái mùa xưa (2012)
Sông (tiểu thuyết, 2012)
Chấm (thơ, 2013)
Đảo (tập truyện ngắn, 2014)
Trầm tích (tập truyện ngắn, 2014), ra chung với Huệ Minh, Lê Thuý Bảo Nhi, Thi Nguyễn.
Đong tấm lòng (gồm hơn 30 tản văn), Nhà xuất bản Trẻ, 2015
Không ai qua sông (tập truyện ngắn, 2016)
Cố định một đám mây (tập truyện ngắn, 2018)

Reviews

[Luka Ruklić · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Would anyone be waiting for us, on those vast fields?”

In my spontaneous, self-imposed literary quest of getting acquainted with Vietnamese writers I have run into this book. It seemed short, it was recommended to me and I was still under the influence of Ticket to Childhood so I decided to give it a go. I was expecting another easy read, but in retrospect the name itself should have been a giveaway that things won’t fare the way I thought.

This book reeks of melancholy. Of sorrow. Of desperation and silent anguish. It is a story devoid of happiness or hope, a tale of children that were forced to play a game of life with dice that always roll one. Domestic violence, hunger and lack of education are mentioned here matter-of-factly, just a few of the thousand drops in the endless river of misery that is their existence. And even the testimonies of good times get dispelled as a mirage moments later when another part of their reality is revealed in its harrowing splendor.

Would I recommend this book? Depends. Do not expect gratification or a good feeling afterward. There are only tiny slivers of content awaiting at the ending and even those are hidden deep beneath layers of uncomfortable emotions. However, if you are looking for a tale that leaves a lasting impression and explores a nomadic world and culture and a lifestyle unfathomable to modern society, this book might be the way to go.

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: sexual violence, r*pe

What an odd book. Don’t be fooled; ENDLESS FIELD hides a lot of darkness. At just around 100 pages, this “no plot mostly vibes” Viet-translated book manages to pack in a lot of commentary about familial duties, modernization, and discrimination against rural people.

Nguyễn Ngọc Tư uses choppy prose, short paragraphs, and non-chronological storytelling to paint a fragmented picture of an impoverished fractured family: Nương, our first-person narrator; Điền, her younger brother; and their father, a broken and lazy man who has gotten into a habit of using women ever since his wife, Nương and Điền’s mother, ran away with another man. Nương’s broken family has eschewed things like a house, society, and a career; they live on a dilapidated houseboat, and struggle to make a living by raising a flock of ducks.

Let’s start with the good. There hasn’t been a lot of contemporary literature coming out of Vietnam in the 21st century, and in that sense ENDLESS FIELD is a pretty good representation of what’s been going on in the Vietnamese literary world. I felt that ENDLESS FIELD did a great job of capturing the small details that make rural Vietnam so beloved to me and many others: descriptions of the language of ducks, the algae growing on the surface of the water, the pressing heat of dry season. While I didn’t like most of the characters, I appreciated Nguyễn’s insistence on creating multifaceted characters who are neither all good nor all bad, but rather creations of their birth and circumstances. I most liked the ways in which we got glimpses of modern Vietnam peaking through, in the way that blanket government decrees unwittingly discriminate against or hurt poor Vietnamese’s livelihoods and endanger the well-being and opportunities for women and girls.

I hate books that depict senseless acts of casual sex, and physical and sexual violence against women, and unfortunately, ENDLESS FIELD had a lot of that. I found it hard to feel for the father, and the various women that he takes advantage of or who take advantage of him. The ending hurt; it felt overly sensational, and I don’t know if it was successful at conveying whatever message it was trying to say.

I appreciate that translated Vietnamese literature is a growing field, but I did take issue with the translation, which was unnatural, off-putting, and poorly edited. I wasn’t sure if the issue was with the author or the translator. There were many cases in which the grammar or idiomatic translation was simply wrong. The one that stands out for me is how Nương was described once as being the “splitting image” of her mother. This isn’t a breakaway from English writing conventions as an artistic choice; it’s just incorrect English, and reads like one who is not very familiar with English language literature.

I do think that translated Viet lit is in its nascent era, so I don’t want to dissuade people from checking out Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s writing. Just check trigger warnings, and adjust your expectations accordingly. I like what Nguyễn Ngọc Tư seems to have to say about contemporary Vietnamese society; I just hope her and other Viet authors’ future works can be translated with more style and grammatical accuracy for an international audience.

[George Neville-Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, intense, harrowing in its own way, wonderfully well written and translated. A gift from a lover who said it was one of his favorite books in his native language, he shared it with me in translation. I can only imagine the original is just as intense. A quick, two hour, read and every page was worth the time it took to consume. I now have to find out if this author wrote more books with this level of intensity.

[Aidan]

Brutally affective. Read in a cafe in an affluent part of Hanoi. Not sure what else to say.

[Rin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and equally as human. It made me feel so much, I had to hold my tears back the entire ride.

[Tate Lamoreaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book that I won’t ever read again (though only 100 pages). I loved how the book was read from their perspective—the silent conversations between siblings, the conversations with ducks—and so it read as natural and normal as if someone were telling you a true story; weird things seemed ordinary because the weird things were ordinary to them. I also think writing in this way let the reader “off the hook” with some of the darker, sadder elements of the story. The vile and the depressing were abstract, not detailed… and I appreciated that. There are a lot of depressing and vile things in this book.

[nhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was an endless field itself — i found myself searching and hoping for happier endings for the protagonist and her brother but only to be found searching, wandering even in the midst of the end. i read this entirely too fast, thereby adding even more pain as i neared the end. do not be fooled by the cover, title and its simplicity, there is a violent nature to this book. it seeps through so slowly as you weave through it. what hurts more is that this book is the reality of so many women and even growing up aligned as a woman then makes this book feel even more painful. i find myself asking why the daughter has to be the one suffering from karma… and wanting a different ending. but maybe in my mind, i can create one for her. i want better for her.

i wish i could’ve read this in viet but my mom bought it for me in english — but the translation seems okay other than some bits of english that are a little confusing

[ATHENA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely different from what I expected. I thought it would be a book about difficulties in life and what they would do to overcome it. But the entirety of this book was betrayal betrayal and betrayal. People that never heal from it, continue on the cycle. People don’t change. People are innately horrible. The abandonment of her mother turns out to be rape and I genuinely think that she killed herself out of shame because she found out her kid knew she was raped. The brother running off to find the prostitute and abandoning his sister that he grew up with. Eventually when she was raped she called out for her brother despite her fucked up dad literally right there. This book had the potential to deep dive and unravel why people end up the way they are but it was still a nice quick read on my way home in one sitting.

[Anh Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


This is a fiction book that keeps you wondering if it is a fictitious book. Nguyen Ngoc Tu embodies the lives of many people in the Mekong Delta through her short stories and they easily gave me chills reading. I finished this book in one night and revisited it countless times in the past years.

[Silvia Quirino · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale of Mekong Delta locals. It’s a devastating and raw story of abandonment and resiliency.
It’s with me even after finishing, I can’t stop thinking and feeling the sadness.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novella by nguy Ngoc Tu.

Very vivid and tale of a nomadic family of duck herders in the Mekong Delta. Was reccomended by maybe goodreads cant remeber, Anyway it starts off immediatley strong with them rescuing the life of a prostitute who is being beaten by the village women. They take her on the boat and sail off in the endless fields.

The book itself is sort of pastoral, reminds me a bit nguyen nhat anh. Very simple writing, takes place in rural life, bad things happen to people, but they mantain their spirir. I feel like vietnamese people are drawn to this kind of rural setting lit because many of them only moved to the city 1 or 2 generations ago. Many people still have rural hometowns where their grandparents live and perhaps this type of lit is a way to reconnect,

beyond that the stories are quite diffefretn, This is pretty adult. The violence, sex and final rape scene would be lost on kids. The final message of hope and acceptance is a very strong one.

Interestingly thao said the authour uses very vietnamese vocabulary so i think there may be some majore points missed in translation, There is also a movie on you tube I should watch,

The book is so short I could definitly read it again. Finished in 1 day.