About Love
288 Words
Le masterfully takes art, teenage love, and Vietnamese food and melds them into a brilliant romance that is homage to Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. As if Le were the Greek god Hephaestus, instead of using raw materials of ore and iron, Le plucks experiences from humanity: love, friendship, grief, acceptance, and second-chances, fusing them into a blaze of indelible moments as iridescent as the burning stars.
Deeply intimate in the portrayal of family, most profoundly in how attuned Le’s narrative is to bridging the loss and sorrow of the past to the present, blending them together like new hues of paint, creating a story that readers will experience on multiple levels.
There are moments in this novel that I’m still taking in. Recalling the collective words, like intricate brush strokes of a masterpiece, searing its brilliance, its spark into memory. And it is Le’s writing of family and the ties binding them together that really cements A Pho Love Story as an exceptional read.
Additionally, Le’s story is a romance a sweet and adorable one at that. Though, there is this undercurrent of sadness weaved throughout. She writes from a historical context with echoes of the Vietnam War and how it has affected those people who came to the United States as well as the main characters. How running a family restaurant can show the deep bonds and ties of family and the love of their native language and food. Family feuds that can lead to ugly and damaging consequences, but hopeful they can be mended. Finding your passion, even when your family might not agree, but doing it all the same because it brings you immense joy.
- Writer
