Cánh Đồng Bất Tận (The Endless Field)

Image from hard copy

Student: Thu Phung

Country: Vietnam

Language: Vietnamese

Title: Cánh Đồng Bất Tận (The Endless Field) 

Author: Nguyễn Ngọc Tư

Year of Publication: April 8, 2006 

Summary:

The title of this book is named after the vast rice field in the Mekong Delta of South of Vietnam. A poor family led hundred of ducks looking for spillage rice seeds remained in the vast field after the harvest. The family has three members: an angry father, a miserable teen daughter and a son who is going through puberty.

Because of the poverty, the wife abandoned her husband with two children to follow a pass-by trader.  The two children kept waiting for their mom while the father changed his style of life.  He worked very hard, and took revenge on women with a lot of hatred. 

The family lived on a small wooden boat, drifted along the river with their herd of ducks.  They only set foot ashore to buy groceries.  The father was poor but good-looking.  When their boat stopped at one place, women were attracted by his cool manly appearance.  He did not promise make promises but he lured women into a new adventures with him. 

One time, the wife sold her house and cattle, and was ready to leave everything behind. However, the father just quietly left with his two children on a small boat with no goal for them.  The wife had no way to return to her own home. She became just like his ex-wife.

The daughter and the boy understood the hatred of their father, but they were too young to stop him.  They have sympathy to those women who treated them better than their own father.  Every day the children wandered on the field with the ducks. They were growing up naively and lonely.  They needed love but their father had no love for them.  He was cold toward the daughter because she looked a lot like her mom. 

One day, the father mistreated a woman that his son was fond of.  When she cried and ran away, the son followed her and never returned to his father’s boat. The son matured in becoming a man after reaching puberty.  However, the daughter remained in deep sorrow because she was desperately lonely.  She loved her father but he never paid attention to her.  The rice field became dry because of drought, poor people became poorer.  Some thugs stole their ducks but the father fought against them, and chased them away.  Angrily, they came back, this time they took revenge on the daughter.  While one was raping her, the others forced the father to look at the scene.  When the daughter saw the tears on her father’s eyes, in the pain of her body, she knew she would forgive all his wrong doing because he has love for her. 

Recommendation:

This sad story can happen anywhere in the world, where children are miserable because of the wrong doing from their parents.  The author, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư is a young woman. She lives in a very remote country where she is close to nature such as:  the river, the boat, the field, the rice plants, the ducks, and all other features of the countryside where people reside.  It is not the content of the story, but the writing that describes the life in the country that is so truthful, which made this book become a best-seller in Vietnamese literature.  Also, a movie was made based on this book, and it received an award for the best new actress (the daughter), the images and the director.