Tag Archives: Vietnam War

Up Country, by Nelson DeMille

Posted on by
Reply
Up Country

I just finished reading Nelson DeMille’s Up Country upon the strong recommendation of my mother. She and I have both read others of DeMille’s books and enjoyed them quite a bit, so picking this one up didn’t require too much persuasion. And I’m glad I did. This is the review that I just posted on Goodreads.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a member of Nelson DeMille’s generation. But when he served in Vietnam, I protested the war there. It was only much later that I developed an interest in Vietnam, not as the site of an earlier, deadly war, but as the home of a culture that went back centuries. I just visited Vietnam about a month ago, and by coincidence happened to pick up DeMille’s book Up Country after I returned. It was fascinating.

The Vietnam DeMille portrays, some twenty to twenty-five years after the end of the war, is on a kind of a cusp–recovering from the war, but still also hurting. His characters are from a generation–DeMille’s generation and mine–that is now only a tiny percentage of the country’s population. The Vietnam I visited, some twenty to twenty-five years after DeMille did, is a very young, and very different, country. That made DeMille’s slice of Vietnam history all the more fascinating. The bomb craters are still there, and the ruination of historic sites still evident, but DeMille brings these facts to life.

On top of that, he weaves a gripping and tense thriller that is hard to put down. The characters are quite enjoyable. The protagonist is hard-boiled, smart, and funny; and the sidekick is a smart, competent woman. I don’t think the romance aspect of the book is as strong as the thriller aspect, and the “love” the characters develop for one another is not entirely convincing. But Up Country never pretended to be a romance, so I don’t think it’s fair to hold that one weakness against it. Five stars for a fascinating and intense read.

View all my reviews

My Son, Vietnam

Posted on by
Reply

My husband and I visited My Son before we truly understood the full antiquity and diversity of the many ethnic groups living in Vietnam. I don’t recommend this approach. But the obvious care with which the site has been and is being restored speaks to the importance of this ancient site and the respect the Vietnamese have for it.

The sign above, located at the drop-off point where visitors must leave their cars and buses, gives some indication of the extent of the site. This drop-off area is still some distance from the actual historical site. A special electric vehicle brings the visitors along a specially built road to the actual sanctuary. Isolated towers may be seen in the distance, Piranesian ruins surrounded by jungle.

At our destination, we learn that My Son was built by the Cham people during the thousand-year heyday of the Champa kingdom (or kingdoms; apparently, scholars disagree), from the fourth to about the fourteenth century A.D. The Champa kingdom in central Vietnam, where My Son is located, was defeated by the Vietnamese from the north in 1471, and the Cham people fled south. Many still live in southern Vietnam.

My Son was only ever a temple complex, at a short remove from the capital city. The Cham were, at that time, Hindu. (Most of the ones living in the south today are Muslim.) And the magnificent red-brick temples of My Son were Hindu temples and other religious buildings.

Located deep in the jungle, the temples of My Son were allowed to fall into ruin for centuries, until the late 1800s, when the French attempted some restoration. But war put an end to that, and when the North Vietnamese used the site as one of their bases, the Americans bombed it. Bomb craters are still visible. Several of the temples were severely damaged.

Perhaps this is fitting for a site largely devoted to Shiva, the god of destruction and war. But the site is beautiful, the temples magnificent even in ruin, and the complex an important monument in the history of civilization on Earth. As visitors and citizens of a diverse and wonderful world, my husband and I are grateful that My Son is now being carefully restored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before leaving, we were treated to a performance of Cham music and dance. Quite a treat!