SOURCE: "The American Dream with a Vietnamese Twist," in The New York Times, August 19, 1997, p. C13.

[In the following review, Kakutani writes that Cao's development of her characters and evocation of time and place "more than make up for" weaknesses in her plot.]

"My dilemma," says Mai, the narrator of Lan Cao's affecting first novel, "was that, seeing both sides to everything, I belonged to neither." Mai lives at once in the past and the present, haunted by the memories of her Vietnamese youth and determined at the same time to create a new life for herself in America. On one hand, she shares the immigrant fears of her mother; on the other, she shares the shiny teen-age dreams of her friends—college, a career, hanging out at the mall.

In Monkey Bridge, Ms. Cao, who left Vietnam in 1975 and now teaches international law at the Brooklyn Law...