"There is no vacancy, no absence, like the expression in a cadaver's face...The human dreams are gone."
Love John Irving's writing.

An engaging story that provides more depth about the country and people of Vietnam.

"What am I dying for? he cried back. I'm dying because this world I'm living in isn't worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you've got a reason to live."

"The ancillary benefit was strip-mining history, leaving the real history in the tunnels along with the dead, doling out tiny sparkling diamonds for audiences to gasp over."

Started this book a couple weeks ago, but I had to return it to the library. Now I bought my own so that I can finish it.

A long time overdue reading this book. A well crafted story and complicated characters.

Interesting reimagining of a classic character.

Starting my next read.

Wonderfully structured. Fascinating characters. Beautiful prose.

"...sheets of yellow flowers glow in the fields, and Jutta wonders if any of them grow over the bones of her brother."

This second paragraph is gorgeous.

"War, Etienne thinks distantly, is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk. Has he traded all those numbers for Marie-Laure's life?"

"Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever."

"Each story Werner hears contains its own flaws and contradictions, as though the truth is a machine whose gears are not meshing."