RaveThe Quarterly ConversationNam Le’s short story collection The Boat can be praised with all the conventional kudo-clusters that reviewers bestow on an up-and-coming author. It is emotionally resonant, piquantly written, exciting, promising. It demonstrates a thrilling range of talents and an extraordinary depth of feeling. It is memorable, harrowing, and polished ... Le’s great gift is in his ability to control his characters through their environments—he reaches into them with the wind and waves of his settings, and provokes their responses without appearing to manipulate them ... Le’s deft touch is due in large part to his keenness of perception when it comes to anticipating his audience’s rhythms of attention, emotion and analysis. Le knows when to slip in a meaningful word or observation and, more importantly, when one would go to waste.
