What do readers think of The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli? Write your own review.

This novel by first time author Tatjana Soli was a haunting depiction of the war in Vietnam from several different fronts. We saw the view of the US military, the view of the Vietnamese civilians and the views of the war photographers who were frequently caught in the middle. The main character, Helen Adams, grows in her understanding of the war through out the novel. She starts out as not being sure why she is there or what she is doing and ends up a stronger woman. It was a fantastic book and one that I couldn't put down once I started reading it.

A beautifully written novel, not just about war, The Lotus Eaters captures the beauty of the country and its people during the horror of the Vietnam War. Helen Adams, an ill-equiped American photojournalist, who when faced with the reality of combat, decides to stay and do the work that no one else feels she is cut out for. Once committed, she may never go back.

By getting a close tight shot the camera can capture the soul of its subject. Tatjana Soli has done just that in her character development, and the drama staged between them. Her use of prose frames each scene in a way that will draw the reader in only to "to forget all thoughts of return.

This is a fabulous read and Tatjana Soli is an author to watch.

The Lotus Eaters, by Tatana Soli harkens the reader back the Viet Nam era; a time of dissent, passion and pain for the American people. One might ask why would you want to revisit that period of our history. But this is a story you don’t want to miss!   

You will experience the war from the perspective of a young female photo journalist named Helen, who learns what war is and the havoc it can play in everyday life. The characters in this story are finely drawn and very human. The love story that unfolds is poignant and powerful. Viet Nam becomes a place of more than war torn tragedy for the reader and for the characters whose lives are entangled in page turning plots that doesn’t let you go until the last page.

I find myself thinking about the book and will be so glad when it is published so I can discuss it with other readers, It will make a great book club read. Could I have already found the best read of 2010?

This novel pulls the reader in with old-fashioned powerful storytelling. It offers tension, atmosphere, compelling characters, strong plot. But what makes "The Lotus Eaters" special - and maybe a little amazing because presumably the author did not experience this place at this time herself - is the depiction of war-time Vietnam.
Though the primary focus appears to be on the American perspective, largely through the eyes of the photojournalist Helen, what comes across as more complex and more unique is the Vietnamese perspective. It is borne mostly by Linh, Soli's strongest creation, but also by minor characters such as Mr. Bao, Grandmother Suong and the orphan Lan. It is not just that the Americans don't really understand what is going on here, but that for all their firepower and wealth, they hardly matter.

Soli gives us breathtaking images, not just the ones of war but just as memorable scenes such as the young women singing love songs on the riverbanks, the tiger appearing like a dream image in a high mountain clearing.

It is not a perfect book. There are many jarring point of view shifts in mid-paragraph. The story really took hold beginning in chapter two and remained hard to put down through chapter thirteen, then flagged a bit. Helen's quest, especially when it moves outside Vietnam, is uneven in its hold on the reader.
But overall it is a moving, absorbing, masterfully told story.

Reading The Lotus Eaters made me think about the Vietnam War and, as a teenager & young adult during some of that time, how little I had been interested in it, which makes me ashamed today.

I loved the realistic descriptions of the War & how it impacted all who were involved, especially the young girl, Lan. I had a hard time really liking Helen or Darrow, but loved Linh.

Tatjana Soli's descriptions of the land,villages and Saigon put me right there. I could feel the heat and humidity and could smell the different odors, even the fish paste!
I would definitely recommend this book to my book club & others. Discussions could be numerous. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I’m fairly well informed on Vietnam and our war there and it has been of abiding interest given the loss of friends and relatives who died for it or of it as well as my own activism during the time. I looked forward to reading this novel and I have had the damnedest time trying to get through it. While Soli has evocative passages of narrative, often bringing the country to life, that cannot be said of her characters. Characterization is weak - and some of the images are hard to swallow. Did she really go to find Vietnam armed only with the knowledge of how to use an Instamatic and that her brother died there? How do we go from a woman-child worried about how to deal with her period to a woman ready to exchange sex for selfish and juvenile emotions while becoming jaded by a war she presumes to understand? I read an advance reader’s copy and I’m not a stranger to those so the extraordinary number of syntactical errors, dependent clauses with no antecedent and unchecked assertions of truth that have made me stumble and go back a sentence or more to decipher are uncommon and have interfered with my reading. There are elements here of a story to be told but the lack of character and plot development as well as serious editing are a hindrance to making it take off.

A book with as much promise as The Lotus Eaters should be able to earn the highest reviewers' marks. Instead, I expect other readers will experience the same level of disappointment that I did.

I approached my reading of this novel with excitement. The Viet Nam conflict was the war of my generation, and the women's movement came into mainstream America during my twenties. What could be better than a novel set in the Viet Nam of the 60s with a female combat photographer as the main character?

As I turned the last page, I realized I was deeply disappointed. Although Tatjana Soli excels at narrative description, her plot structure and development are mediocre and juvenile. I tripped over too many syntax problems, anachronisms, and unexplained non-sensical acronyms. I realize this was a pre-publication draft, but no good writer should let such sentences loose in the world.

I would like to have been able to give a better review, especially to a writer who seems gifted at evoking a vast sense of time and place. Soli, however, needs to do some serious work on character and plot development.

Do all war correspondents and photographers use their working conditions as an excuse to jump into sexual relationships at the drop of a hat, overuse alcohol and drugs, gamble foolishly, setting aside their own rules of decent behavior? Or do authors want us to understand that "war is hell" and this is the only possible way they can deal with it while covering the atrocities? Love came too quickly to Helen so that set the tone for the story not having believability. There was a gap in the story that was never explained. I felt that Soli was able to depict Vietnam clearly and accurately. For those of us who have never seen war first hand, it is always such a shock to read it. Soli shocked me with her descriptions.

I wish she had paid as much attention to the characters as she did to the vividness of the country and the war.