Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine by Thao Votang
Linh Ly is NOT doing just fine. But she is trying to convince herself she is. At 27 years old, Linh feels like she should have everything figured out by now, despite the difficult past she must reckon with, and the challenges facing her day-to-day. Thao Votang’s Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine puts a unique spin on the “millennial quarter-life crisis” novel, offering depth and insight into a Vietnamese American woman trying to make sense of her family, her history, and herself.
Family Coming-of-Age Drama
Before she was 20, Linh Ly’s mother moved from Vietnam to America, and dove into her new life with a husband and daughter. Of course, she never anticipated the years of abuse she and her daughter would face at the hands of her husband. “What was it like to have the man you married turn out to be nothing you had wished for?”
Linh, now in her late twenties, knows her mother deserves better than the alcoholic, abusive man she recently divorced. The relief of her parents’ separation doesn’t make it any easier for Linh when word breaks that her mom has a date with a new man. Who is he? What is he like? Can he be trusted?
So Linh does the only thing that makes sense to keep her mother safe. She follows her mom on dates with various men. It starts out innocently enough — park outside her mom’s apartment to make sure her date picks her up and they go somewhere reasonable, she gets home safe, and he doesn’t creepily linger outside afterward.
But then, it turns obsessive as Linh cuts her hair, changes her wardrobe, and disguises herself so that her spying can continue under the radar. When she shows up at tennis practice — her only consistent activity besides spying, sleeping and eating — she isn’t prepared to come face to face with Peter, one of her mom’s dates.
As partners for an upcoming tournament, she has an excuse to get close to Peter without letting him know who she is. Of course, she does her own research on the side, digging through the internet and his children’s social media accounts. Linh needs to learn anything she can to protect her mother, even if it means putting herself in danger.
Linh’s genuine love for her mother and fear of the past repeating itself turn into an obsessive routine. It grows worse after a shooting at the university where Linh works, and she refuses to ever suffer those feelings of helplessness and inaction again. But can sleep, tennis, a minimal social life and a lot of following her mom make a life? And what of her estranged father, who she hasn’t spoken to in years, who goes to strip clubs, stumbles home drunk, and suddenly owns a gun? Are the parents she knew from childhood the people she sees in front of her now?
Grappling with Trauma and Identity
Both Vietnamese and American, Linh struggles with a life that feels two-sided. Constantly an outsider among her privileged, wealthy white friends and coworkers, her self-conscious awareness of her existence is tangible. She wonders, “Could I ever escape that feeling of not belonging? Of being different and some unnamable sort of unease?” Linh is both an only child, expected to care for her immigrant parents and desperate to protect and understand her mother, and also an adult trying to navigate life, dating and individuality as a modern American woman. Where do these two points intersect, and how can she find herself somewhere in the mix of these two identities?
Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine is an emotional, humorous and much-needed look at the ways one young woman tries to help the people she loves, and how easy it is to get in her own way. Readers will laugh and cry as Linh fumbles through life, comes face to face with her high-school crush, follows her parents, drinks or sleeps away the pain, and tries to make sense of the hand she’s been dealt. All along, she grapples with the trauma of her past and the quickly changing nature of her relationships, thinking, “What was love supposed to feel like? What was it supposed to look like? I had no idea.” In the end, Linh Ly will find out, and she will be just fine.
Thao Votang’s work has been published in Salon, Hyperallergic, Sightlines, Southwest Contemporary and Lucky Jefferson. She coedited Conflict of Interest, an arts and lit publication, and cofounded the Tiny Park arts space. When she’s not looking at art, she can be found reading one of the many books she has put in her bag or hidden under that couch cushion. Her fiction is informed by her experience as part of the Vietnamese diaspora deep in the lone star state, her interest in how we love our mothers, and the climate catastrophe.
