Debut author Jacquie Pham builds a novel that is both a complex murder mystery and an exploration of the problematic nature of colonization. Duy, Minh, Phong, and Edmond are close friends at one of the most prestigious boarding schools in 1917 Vietnam when they sneak out on a forbidden visit to the most famous, fortune teller in town. What starts as a young boys' lark ends on a dark note when they receive a prophecy: "The four of you. One will lose his mind. One will pay. One will agonize.... One will die." A decade later, the final part becomes reality, and the three survivors are left to determine which of them is a murderer--and which of them will pay the price for their friend's death.
Those Opulent Days moves back and forth in time between the boys' friendship as young men and the days leading up to the death, and Pham leaves tantalizing clues for readers to figure out the identities of the murdered and murderer. The boys at the center of this intricate novel are among the richest and most powerful in the colony: Minh is heir to Vietnam's largest rubber plantation, Duy to the colony's largest opium business. Phong is the lone son of a wealthy businessman and scholar, and Edmond of a privileged French diplomat. Edmond's very existence exhibits something the other three struggle to identify: "Whatever Edmond wanted, Edmond received. Somewhere deep down, did they all feel inferior? Minh didn't know. He didn't hate Edmond, or at least he didn't think so. Perhaps it was what Edmond represented--someone better than him, someone easier to love, someone he could never be."
What the blond-haired, green-eyed European represents is far more sinister than merely the personal failings of his friends, however; his existence in Vietnam is representative of the opportunity afforded to Europeans and denied to the Vietnamese people, of the prejudice and racism steeped into the colonial systems of power and privilege in which these boys--now men--were raised: "The French ruled the colony, but they didn't understand its people--they needed locals, rich enough, corrupt and ambitious enough, to supply them with insight and cash."
Those Opulent Days brims with lush detail and characters at once rich, corrupt, and ambitious. It's the best type of historical fiction--a novel that reveals new and nuanced layers of context within the structure of a compelling plot. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Shelf Talker: A complex murder mystery set in 1928 Vietnam explores the prejudice, inequality, and violence of French colonization.