Tom Vanstone’s Reviews > The Sorrow of War > Status Update

Kien and Phuong really did love each other and were prevented from seeing each other by the military boys in the abandoned school, though they said later that they feel bad about it. I’m very close to finishing this!!!

this book also tackles heavily a theme of female exploitation during the war. Both Hoa and Phuong are raped several times and are unable to do anything about it. Kien does not entirely understand what happens to Phuong when they are heading into war but by the time that Hoa experiences something similar, he is more understanding.

this book is so confusing 😭😭😭 Kien feels so passionately towards fighting the war and staying with his girlfriend that when he is torn apart from one of them, he can only think of the other.

His relationship with Phuong is very strong, though they don’t make love before he goes to war. He will often dream of her but sometimes think of her in daytime, when he is ill or injured. The nurse Lien has similarities to Phuong and so Kien believes she is Phuong when he is very injured. After the war, just seeing Phuong brings back memories of people in the war.

the next section explores Kien’s strong relationships with his dad and his girlfriend before the war broke out and shows that they were the only people he really talked to (though his father preferred his girlfriend, Phuong)

years after the war, and weird paranormal supernatural activities are taking place on the battlefields as the MIA team try to find out who is making the screaming sounds whilst Kien can only think of Quang and his death holding a grenade

I find this book jumps around a lot in time but perhaps it is just my interpretation. when Kien returns from the war to his house he finds that his girlfriend has brought a new man back to his house and this deeply hurts him. “His life, after ten destructive years of war, had then been punctured by the sharp thorns of love”

as the book progresses, the hardship and brutality endured by the soldiers and civilians post-war is explored. It appears there is little left for Kien, until he starts writing his first novel. We meet his old classmate Sinh, who is so ill that he cannot talk or his lungs will collapse