All That’s Left Unsaid: a must read debut fiction novel about heatbreaking family tragedy not to miss in 2022!

The way in which this story wove together characters' pasts and perspectives made it a fascinating read. A very authentic portrayal of south-western Sydney in the 1990s. The honesty with which the author has bared the themes of racism, white saviourism and the anxieties faced by refugees and their children is remarkable. I devoured this novel very quickly and will go back for a more leisurely and reflective read.

Audiobook

Prior to reading “All That’s Left Unsaid”, I had heard many positive reviews. My expectations had thus been set high. Perhaps too high. While the book is an enjoyable read, and we will hear more of the debut author, Tracey lien, in the future, I’m reluctant to get carried away. “All That’s Left Unsaid” is set in the 1990s in Cabramatta, in Sydney’s south west. At the time, it was the entry point for many Vietnamese refugees fleeing their homeland in search of a new life. The Vietnam War had only recently ended and many Vietnamese nationals could not reconcile with the new regime. Word of mouth suggested that Cabramatta was a good starting point and the rest, as the old saying goes, is history. At the books’ outset, there has been a horrible murder at a Vietnamese restaurant in Cabramatta. A teenage boy by the name of Denny Tran has been beaten to death. There are witnesses to the crime but none is willing to talk to the authorities. They all, allegedly, saw nothing. The boy’s older sister, Ky, is having none of this. She’s on a mission to find the truth. In the process, the reader is introduced to the crime, deprivation and heroin trafficking that was so much part of Cabramatta life in the 1990s. In this respect, Tracey Lien does a wonderful job. The characters are honest and totally believable. Having grown up in Cabramatta, Lien knows her turf and can unquestionably bring it to the page. As I said at the outset, perhaps my burden is that the book has been so hyped. Yes, it’s good. Yes, Lien will go on to write other books of quality. However, it was slightly less than I expected.

This excellent work deepened my understanding of the migrant/refugee experience in Australia, although I am sure that the themes are universal. It is so easy to underestimate the stresses of migrant children, who are torn by the cultural expectations of their parents and of their new country, who are forced to make extreme choices simply to "fit in". They may be drawn to "get with the ghetto" or to be "whiter than white". Intergenerational trauma is a strongly explored theme in this work: how we, as parents, knowingly or otherwise, condemn our children to suffer as we did, to bear the brunt of our anger at our fate and our failures. The book offers no elegant solutions to the problems raised, but, by holding a mirror to the universal problem, it gives the insight that we have the choice to override our auto-pilot responses and to make deliberate choices about how we relate to our world.