Short Girls - Softcover

Nguyen, Bich Minh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143117505 ISBN 13: 9780143117506

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2010

Synopsis

The authentic and compassionate first novel about two sisters from the author of the acclaimed memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Called "A writer to watch, a tremendous talent" by the Chicago Tribune, Bich Minh Nguyen makes her fiction debut with the deeply moving and entertaining story of two Vietnamese sisters. Aside from their petite stature, Van and Linny Luong couldn't be more different. Diligent, unassuming Van works as an immigration lawyer in the Michigan suburbs where she resides with her handsome, Chinese-American lawyer husband. Beautiful, fashionable Linny lives in Chicago and has drifted into an affair with a married man. When Van's picture-perfect marriage collapses and Linny finds herself grappling to escape her dead-end life, the long-estranged sisters are unable to confide in one another- until their eccentric inventor father calls them back home to the Vietnamese American community they fled long ago.

About this title

Review:

"A lively, engaging novel of sisterly angst and the cultural heritage ... an exceptional debut, funny, insightful and literary, with lots to mull over after you put it down."
-- Chicago Tribune

From the Back Cover:

'Loaded with tender charm and wry, lightly observed insights' Daily Mail

Sisters Van and Linny - like their father - are short. But they couldn't be more different. Van's the overachiever - a high-flying lawyer with a pristine home and husband, until the husband walks out. Linny is fashionable, flighty, works for a catering firm called You Did It Dinners and has just been told by her married lover that he's sticking with his wife.

So much to talk about. And yet they don't.

However, when their father invents a device to enable short people to reach high objects but needs to become an American citizen to sell it, the sisters are forced to work together to help him. If he's ever to succeed in an American Idol-style reality TV show for desperate inventors, Van and Linny must put aside their differences and admit what it is they have in common . . .

'Fans of Amy Tan and Monica Ali will love Short Girls, which has already been dubbed a Vietnamese The Joy Luck Club' Red

'A smoothly pleasurable read' Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0143117505
• ISBN 13: 9780143117506
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304