SOURCE: Gilgore, Kathleen. “As Others See the Vietnamese.” Christian Science Monitor 84, no. 199 (4 September 1992): 12.

In the following excerpt, Gilgore extols Butler's poignant and respectful treatment of the Vietnamese people and their language in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain makes deeper and truer sense of the bittersweet life of exiled Vietnamese. He concentrates on Westernized families who escaped in 1975. The only American fiction writer who has delved deeply into the lives and psyches of these new Americans, Butler is fluent in Vietnamese, and it shows. It's refreshing to see this ancient and subtle language used with respect instead of GI pidgin.

Each of Butler's stories forms a poignant monologue. The Vietnamese characters take center stage and speak as if justifying their existence. Sometimes this didacticism is intrusive, but it may be unavoidable; the world view of the characters...