
Things We Lost to the Water
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Quyen Ngo
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By:
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Eric Nguyen
About this listen
A captivating novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped. This stunning debut is "vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting…in its intimacy" (The New York Times Book Review).
When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.
But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity - as individuals and as a family - threatens to tear them apart, until disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.
©2021 Eric Nguyen (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year
Winner of the Crook's Corner Book Prize for Best Debut Novel Set in the American South
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year
An Atlanta Journal Constitution Top 10 Southern Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
Named One of the "Fifteen Books to Watch For" by The New York Times
“Nguyen’s narrative strikes a very elusive balance: vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting - enchanting, really - in its intimacy.” (Bryan Washington, The New York Times Book Review)
“Eric Nguyen’s masterful debut novel Things We Lost to the Water is a deeply engaging, heart-rending look at a family of Vietnamese refugees struggling to survive and how the choices they make as individuals have ripple effects on each other.” (Suzanne Van Atten, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
"Things We Lost to the Water introduces an exquisite new voice in author Eric Nguyen; his debut novel is a luminous, balletic portrayal of an immigrant Vietnamese family in the US.... Nguyen navigates their multiple perspectives with dexterity and emotional clarity, aching but never maudlin. I loved every page." (Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed)
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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And Then She Fell
- A Novel
- By: Alicia Elliott
- Narrated by: Cheri Maracle, Jenna Clause
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve—a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture—is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors.
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hau day own day!
- By Karli on 11-06-23
By: Alicia Elliott
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Promise
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
- Narrated by: Imani Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kindred sisters—Ezra and Cinthy—have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs. But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way.
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Powerful!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-14-23
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The Freedom Clause
- A Novel
- By: Hannah Sloane
- Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Could one night off a year save a marriage—or destroy it? In this bold and sexy debut, a young couple agrees to open their marriage, but they soon discover that a little freedom has surprising consequences.
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Interesting Concept, Dragged Out Too Long
- By S. C. on 10-25-23
By: Hannah Sloane
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The Perfect Sister
- A Novel
- By: Stephanie DeCarolis
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Kaleo Griffith, Andrew Eiden, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Alex Walker has always looked up to her perfect older sister. Maddie has succeeded in all the ways Alex has not: She escaped their hometown and seems to have put the memories of their unstable childhood behind her. But despite the different paths their lives have taken, the two sisters made a pact to spend one week together every summer. It was a promise they’d never broken . . . until now.
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Thrilling!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-07-24
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The Incorrigibles
- A Novel
- By: Meredith Jaeger
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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1890, San Francisco. Seduced by her employer’s nephew, Annie Gilmurray, an Irish maid, is accused of stealing the ring he promised her. Sentenced to one year in San Quentin, Annie is heartbroken and frightened among the inmates of the women’s ward: prostitutes, murderers, and pickpockets. But Annie finds beauty and friendship in a brutal place, where the women look out for one another, dreaming of a better life after release. But their world inside San Quentin's walls is a dangerous one, and when the unthinkable happens, Annie makes a choice that will alter the course of her future forever.
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A page-turner following strong women finding their agency imbued with rich, local SF history
- By S. Brett on 06-04-24
By: Meredith Jaeger
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A Brief History of Living Forever
- A Novel
- By: Jaroslav Kalfar
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When Adéla discovers she has a terminal illness, she leaves behind her native Czech village for a chance at reuniting in America with Tereza, the daughter she gave up at birth, decades earlier. But the country Adéla experienced as a young woman, when she eloped with a filmmaker and starred in his cult sci-fi movie, has changed entirely. In 2030, America is ruled by an authoritarian government increasingly closed off to the rest of the world.
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Not so distant future
- By Kindle Customer on 05-14-23
By: Jaroslav Kalfar
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Much Ado About Nada
- By: Uzma Jalaluddin
- Narrated by: Farah Kidwai
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Nada Syed is stuck. On the cusp of thirty, she’s still living at home with her brothers and parents in the Golden Crescent neighbourhood of Toronto, resolutely ignoring her mother’s unsubtle pleas to get married already. While Nada has a good job as an engineer, it’s a far cry from realizing her start-up dreams for her tech baby, Ask Apa, the app that launched with a whimper instead of a bang because of a double-crossing business partner. Nothing in her life has turned out the way it was supposed to, and Nada feels like a failure. Something needs to change.
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Everything it’s supposed to be!
- By Pamela on 06-16-23
By: Uzma Jalaluddin
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Scarlet in Blue
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Murphy
- Narrated by: Justis Bolding, Stephen Graybill, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For Blue Lake’s entire life, she and her mother, Scarlet, have been on the run from HIM - the man who Scarlet, a talented and enigmatic painter, insists is chasing them. But now, at 15 years old, Blue has begun to resent the nomadic life that once seemed like an adventure, increasingly unsure what to make of the phantom pursuer she’s never seen. She only yearns to settle down in one place, to live a normal life.
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Great production of a good and interesting book
- By K. Gruber on 07-19-23
By: Jennifer Murphy
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Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes
- By: Kathleen West
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Isobel Johnson has spent her career in Liston Heights sidestepping the community’s high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of anti-Americanism and a liberal agenda, she’s in the spotlight. Meanwhile, Julia Abbott, obsessed with the casting of the school’s winter musical, makes an error in judgment that has far-reaching consequences for her entire family.
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Julia Whelan makes all books great!
- By Ellen Zelda on 02-19-20
By: Kathleen West
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Water Finds a Way
- A Novel
- By: Meghan Perry
- Narrated by: Elsa Lepecki Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Can coming home bring redemption? Or at least a measure of peace? Recently released from prison, Blake Alvares returns to the only place she ever felt safe, the now derelict Maine town in which she harbored as a teen. Determined to conceal her secrets and losses, she soon finds herself dragged into others’ lives when she takes a job on a boat owned by a notorious young lobsterman.
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Water Finds a Way
- By accordion thief on 05-17-25
By: Meghan Perry
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Old Enough
- A Novel
- By: Haley Jakobson
- Narrated by: Jenna Kray, Haley Jakobson
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Savannah "Sav" Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she's getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.
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Loved!!
- By Louise Judd on 07-20-23
By: Haley Jakobson
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Build Your House Around My Body
- A Novel
- By: Violet Kupersmith
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.
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Epic, Horrifying & Mystical
- By Jonathan T. Jefferson on 07-20-21
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Popisho
- A Novel
- By: Leone Ross
- Narrated by: Leone Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Somewhere far away - or maybe right nearby - lies an archipelago called Popisho. A place of stunning beauty and incorrigible mischief, destiny, and mystery, it is also a place in need of change. A storm is brewing. Before it comes, before the end of the day, this wildly imaginative narrative will take us across the islands, their history, and into the lives of unforgettable characters.
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Moving and Lyrical
- By Nicole Ivy on 08-28-21
By: Leone Ross
The amount of adapting displaced peoples have to do and the reminder of how every forgets about the Indigenous peoples of the territory they’ve found themselves in. Could be that displaced ppls have not had the oppt. to learn about Indigenous Peoples are still alive. Maybe whenever in America they end up - New Orleans - there’s no public remembrance of local Indigenous ppls. Not taught truthfully I’m schools or recognized - I don’t know. But, if there were, maybe the characters would consider this in their displacement journey? Empathize or relate somehow. Understand in a way. But, that’s not the story. I’m just always curious.
Regardless of my wishful plot twist, I appreciate the narrative in ways that really makes me think about the Canadian experience and what displaced people feel
when they are somewhere unfamiliar trying the best they can.
Displacement journeys will at some point touch all of us
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Gorgeous novel and excellent narration
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So what happens!?
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The story was a poignant telling of being uprooted from one home and learning to survive someplace new. The harsh alienation, the missteps in raising a child and the folly of youth, and discordant feeling of being out of place now matter where you go.
My only gripe likely has more to do with my personal taste in reading, but I didn't find there to be much plot to the story. But that doesn't mean it wasn't well written.
While I typically go in for books that are taking the reader in a journey and leaving you theorizing and curious, this reads like a recollection of memories that are striking in the life of the protagonists, but won't be the key to uncovering any grand mystery later in the narrative.
Powerfully insightful
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Narrator really helped me understand the story.
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Loved the narration and detail put into the story.
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Scratching my head
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One on the best of the year?
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Narrator distracting
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A good story, however.
Vietnamese immigrant experience
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