Love Like Hate
Linh Dinh
Balcones Literary Prize, 2011
In Love Like Hate, Linh Dinh weaves a dysfunctional family saga that doubles as a portrait of Vietnam in the last half century. Protagonists Kim Lan and Hoang Long marry in Saigon during the Vietnam War, uniting in a setting that allows Dinh's dark, deadpan humor to flourish. Describing his mushrooming cast of characters in unsentimental and sometimes absurd ways, Dinh embraces contradictions with the surreal exuberance of Matthew Sharpe and the stylistic elan of Italo Calvino.
REVIEWS
"If Linh started cranking out novels one would speak of P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler and Henry James, the writers you read to learn the chord changes in English … As he writes he teaches a patriotic creed that you aren't going to get from the loudspeakers in the Socialist Republic, from foreigners who feel sorry, from exiles who yearn, and travelers who gawk … The work of Linh Dinh for the common reader is a pedagogy in realism, in life for most people most of the time." —Dan Duffy, Diacritics
"Love Like Hate is [Dinh's] first novel, and a pleasure to read – the voice, words, and characters are as carefully crafted as a work poem or a short story … If I were teaching high school, this is a book I'd assign to my students." —Vapor Trail Gallery
"Linh Dinh has written some of the most influential and widely-taught books of poetry and prose poetry, and his novel debut is equally groundbreaking. Love Like Hate paints an intimate picture of Vietnam before and after the Fall of Saigon … Dinh proves the age-old mantra that poets often write better prose than prose-writers." —The Hydra Magazine
"Dinh's abrupt epiphanies mix A.D.D. with Thoreau's economy, Calvino's globe-trotting, and a pungent eroticism reminiscent of Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories." —Village Voice
"Dinh reveals a refreshing sense of utter irreverence and experimental fun. A definite must-read." —AsianWeek
"At once caustic and humorous, harshly critical and nostalgic, Dinh's overview of his homeland is unfailingly honest." —Booklist
"Linh Dinh is already one of the secret masters of short fiction. Love Like Hate is something like a traditional cross-cultural novel that's been shocked into life by Dinh's uncanny ability to tell us stories we didn't even know we wanted to hear." —Ed Park, editor of The Believer and author of Personal Days"Love Like Hate affirms that Linh Dinh's is one of the great original voices in American literature of the 21st century. The English language is a better, weirder, smarter place with Dinh writing in it." —Matt Sharpe, author of Jamestown
