Perspective

This story was told entirely from the first-person viewpoint of the author, Andrew Pham. Everything and everyone he encountered, in Mexico, the USA, and Vietnam, were seen through the filter of his opinions and interpretations. The book was about both the exterior and interior lives of its author. As much as a journey through a country, it was an internal exploration of all the influences that made the man called Andrew Pham. One aspect of the book that helped to prevent the singular perspective of the author from becoming tedious was that it spanned years of his life, going back to when he was a toddler. The perspectives, therefore, were quite different throughout the book, because they variously came from a little child, a preteen, a teenager, and a young man. Moreover, the story was not presented chronologically, which meant that these viewpoints shifted back and forth throughout...