Menu
Maybe someday
31
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
11/100Critics
52/100Scholars
Author:
Beth Nguyen
Publisher:
Scribner
Date:
July 4, 2023
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth's mother stayed--or was left behind--and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth's relationship with her mother, framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years.
What The Reviewers Say
A portrait of things left unsaid.
Nguyen puts these experiences into writing, a healing recognition occurs, most movingly through her children, who are able to see and validate things she cannot..
Nguyen is a confident and reliable protagonist even when running up against painful memories, providing readers with enough distance as to almost be objective.
...a quietly affecting memoir about family connection and disconnection. From the haunting opening line, the memoir is tinged with yearning and sorrow: 'Over the course of my life I have known less than twenty-four hours with my mother'.
