The Other Shore by Hoa Pham

(Goldsmiths Press, 2023)

Reviewed by Harry Slater

The Other Shore, by Hoa Pham, winner of the Viva La Novella prize, deals with some of the biggest questions there are. It’s about life and death and legacy, about power and control, colonisation and oppression, ancestry and the price we pay for the future we want. And it’s all told from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Nguyen. That makes for some interesting stylistic choices; the prose can sometimes feel stilted, lacking in the emotional clout that an older voice might add. At the same time, though, there’s a visceral naivety at play here, the realisations of the state of the world are ever more compelling because they’re wounds delivered fresh, for the first time. In one way, then, The Other Shore is a coming-of-age story, and at the same time a brutal indictment of human cruelty, an examination of the structures of power that bind Vietnam, and the world, and how they’ve come to be.

Continue reading…

Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.