I was captivated by Vi Khi Nao’s writing in The Italy Letters. Raw, erotic, poetic, passionate, this novel is contextualized in today’s time and in the daily life of a Vietnamese immigrant lesbian writer with a gambling suicidal mother. The narrator (only named once) is obsessed by a straight woman in England. Most of the book is her fantasies about telling this woman who is about to get married to a man how she wants to have sex with her.
“My mother and I then fell into a second wave of sleep. When I woke, my body was swollen with desire for you and you had written me.”
These letters may also be fantasy. While the book addresses a you, it is not epistolary but a kind of stream of consciousness about the communication between them and within the narrator’s mind. Her passion for her beloved and her own discomfort with life pulls the reader into her mind.
There is a break from her obsession with the straight woman when she tries to live with roommate Cherimoya in Las Vegas, has an unsuccessful affair with her, and then gets attracted to her sister.
While the narrator is caretaking her mother and trying to keep her from gambling and wanting to end her life, she herself begins to wonder if life is worth living. Her mother brings in some Vietnamese culture as does the narrator preparing Pho and other dishes. In a way, she is like her mother but her obsession is women, especially the inaccessible married one in London.
Did her mother smell her sexual aromas? Yes, and there’s a lot about food. Periodic nonsequiturs, name-dropping of lesbian writers, of political figures and criminals with their sexual crimes give a sense of the current time period and at times the creepy side of life. How creepy is a country that would elect a kind of Hitler for president? (She thinks)
Vi’s teaching life and her poverty, her struggles with publishing as well as her own book of poetry, The Vanishing Point of Desire, all seem like characters in the novel.
The narrator’s poetic point of view is beautifully detailed in the book: “My desire for Cherimoya’s sister remained quiet like a plum.” I loved the way she talked so openly about her throbbing clitoris: “My body had become a pool of circular light, particularly near my clitoris.” But there is also an unrelenting dark side.
I wonder if it matters whether something is fictional or not. Vi animated everything as a character, even a tree in the end. It was a really fascinating read.
I appreciate the ARC preview from NetGalley. The book will be published in August.

what a wonderful book. I very much enjoyed the style of writing and the flux of conscience while getting to know this unrequited love (or that we think it's unrequited). it was like invading a diary, raw and real and strange at times (like life is). and the writing was very poetic.

"The Italy Letters" is not your traditional novel. It's voyeuristic and hard to put down. Readers explore the deepest folds of the narrators mind in a series of letters to her Italian lover. Author Vi Khi Nao dissolves the traditional novel in this poetic telling.

Once you start this novel I recommend you stick with it. It's like riding through a dream and it's best to ride it until the end.

Thank you author Vi Khi Nao for bringing this book to readers, thank you Melville House Publishing, and thank you NetGalley for providing us readers with this title.

Equal parts stunningly beautiful and achingly heartrending, Vi Khi Nao's "The Italy Letters" is the closest thing we have to an English example of the Portuguese notion of saudade. Brilliant, emotional, full of feeling.

Thanks to Melville House and NetGalley for this eARC!

I'm a huge fan of Vi Khi Nao's work, and this was no exception. I loved the letter format and how organic the storytelling felt through this medium. Nao's voice and writing is not one to be missed, and I'm surprised people aren't talking about her work more. I burned through this book pretty quickly, and I can't wait for the next one.