What We’re Reading: The Lotus Eaters

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

Over my holiday break, I dove into some bestsellers, including Tatjana Soli’s novel, The Lotus Eaters. The harrowing and heart-wrenching story follows Helen, an American photojournalist in Vietnam during the war. Present-day Helen finds herself in Saigon in 1975, with the city falling, and the war coming to a violent end. The novel then traces back the last 12 years of Helen’s life in Vietnam. Over the years, we see Helen caught between the love of two men, her obsession with the war growing, and her love of the country deepen (and more specifically, the city Saigon where she lives).

Helen is drawn to Vietnam after losing her brother to the war, so in a way, her journey to Vietnam starts with him. But soon, it becomes more than that, as she begins to call this country home. Helen begins a tumultuous affair with another photographer, the larger-than-life and unhappily married Sam Darrow, and simultaneously begins a hesitant friendship with Linh, Sam’s assistant, who later becomes Helen’s assistant, and is a true friend to both. Eventually, after the affair is over, Helen falls into the arms of and marries Linh, who is a quiet, complicated Vietnamese man with unclear loyalties in the war. He later ends up becoming a photojournalist in his own right. Helen, too, makes a name for herself with her unabashed, daring photography, capturing images of a country that is constantly shifting, a country of violence, love, beauty, and chaos. All the while, she immerses herself in to the country’s language, culture, and it’s war. As Helen herself says. she has “slipped beneath the surface of the war and found the country.” And so do we, as her dedicated readers.

Soli’s novel doesn’t shy away from the complex emotions and politics swirling around the Vietnam War, and here is where I found myself really appreciating her as an author. War is never clean-cut, and especially the Vietnam War. Many are comparing Soli to Tim O’Brien, whose expertise at writing about war, and specifically Vietnam, makes him a master of the genre. Soli definitely belongs in the same camp as O’Brien. She handles each piece of the plot and character with such care and weight that I often lost myself completely in the story, and had a hard time surfacing back into reality (this was one of those books that I finished at 2:30 a.m., because I couldn’t fall asleep until I finished it). Carefully painstaking details, a story line that never feels rushed (until, perhaps, the very end), and a reverence for history make this novel come alive.

This story is additionally resonating because Helen, a woman, is thriving in what she calls a man’s world — the world of war, the world of photojournalism in the 60s and 70s. We see Helen’s flaws and insecurities as intimately as we see her strength and ability to love. We see her hunger for a place in this place of men, and fight her way to a place of respect.

What did you read over the holidays? What books suck you into their world utterly and completely?