All That's Left Unsaid

July 15, 2022
In a Vietnamese immigrant community in Sydney, Australia, a woman investigates her teenage brother's murder. The troubles in 1990s Cabramatta are many. The North and South Vietnamese people who came to the area as refugees after the war are deeply marked by the horrors they experienced, and they are inflicting their damage on the first-generation Australians who are their children. Lien's debut communicates the specific operation of generational trauma with nuance and insight. The psychological predicament of the families she writes about is exacerbated by Cabramatta's heroin epidemic and institutionalized anti-Asian racism among the "blondies" of White Australia. Between these two factors, when 17-year-old Denny Tran is beaten to death after Cabramatta High School's senior formal, the police show little interest in finding the murderer. Denny must have been a junkie or in a gang, they assume. And since everyone who was at the popular banquet hall where it happened, including the boy's best friends and one of his teachers, claims to have been in the bathroom and seen nothing, there's no reason for them to think otherwise. His older sister, Ky, returns from her newspaper job in Melbourne to attend the funeral and ends up staying on in shock and outrage to find the truth of what happened. Her brother was no junkie or gang member: A sweet, kind, funny, almost perfect boy, he died with the "Most Likely To Succeed" award he had just won in his pocket. Her investigation will take her back into her and her brother's shared past, particularly her friendship with Minh Le--Minnie--who long ago went from beloved best friend to stranger. If Lien goes a bit too far in carrying out the mission of the book's title, giving more emotional accounting and exposition in dialogue than is ideal, this book is nonetheless memorable and powerful. A fictional tragedy evoked with such clarity and specificity that it will linger in your memory as if it really happened.

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Starred review from July 25, 2022
Set in 1996, Lien’s insightful, emotional debut intelligently incorporates cultural concerns into a tightly focused mystery. Journalist Ky Tran has just launched her career as a newspaper reporter when she returns home to her Vietnamese community of Cabramatta, Australia, for the funeral of her popular 17-year-old brother, Denny, who was beaten to death at the Lucky 8 restaurant on the night of his high school graduation. Since Ky’s grief-stricken parents, who speak limited English, are incapable of pushing for answers, and the police are stymied because none of the dozens of bystanders at the Lucky 8, some family friends, will admit to witnessing Denny’s murder, she decides to investigate herself. Ky must maneuver around her parents’ traditional ways, fear of white people, and superstitions rooted in their Vietnamese culture. The 100% white police force is, at best, indifferent as the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta is a refugee enclave with the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history and where violent crime is the norm. Lien skillfully blends xenophobia and the Vietnamese residents’ suspicions of outsiders into a scintillating plot. Readers will eagerly await Lien’s next. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, ICM Partners.

August 1, 2022
Growing up, Vietnamese-Australian Ky hated being her parents' translator at the bank, the grocery store, and parent-teacher conferences. But when her younger brother, Denny, a shining example of academic excellence and the apple of her parents' eye, is brutally murdered, Ky knows she has to be more than a translator: she has to uncover the motive for his senseless killing. Australian debut novelist Lien embeds the reader in a tight-knit Asian community within the small town of Cabramatta, highlighting the cultural distance between recent immigrants and their native-born children. Ky mostly narrates, with Lien allowing witnesses to the crime to step in and explain the events leading up to Denny's murder along with their own personal backgrounds and biases. Using Ky's journey to better understand a single, tragic night, Lien lets readers experience the shifting demographics and cultural attitudes of this small Australian town. Fans of Roselle Lim and Sonya Cobb will appreciate Lien's keen exploration of the cultural impulse to close ranks after a tragedy, and the power of clarity.

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