“Hương didn’t tell her mother this, but she had wanted to be the one to wake her daughter and reveal the surprise—that the three of them were playing hooky, for the first time ever.”

Hương feels the distance between herself and her daughter, Ann, and puts much of the blame for it on her own mother, Minh. This sentiment sets up the theme of The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships central to the novel.

“The ocean. So beautiful and unpredictable. It reminded her, in some ways, of Ann’s father. In her mind, she saw the flash of an ashtray flying through the air. A muslin blanket falling too rapidly to the ground. There was no safety in the ocean, or in love.”

To Hương, the ocean provides an image of Ann’s father’s unpredictability and danger. Haunted by the Past, Hương sees both love and the ocean as dangerous things to be avoided at all costs.

“Over the past few days, there’s been a new alienation of my body, a sense of clumsiness, nausea.”

The bodily alienation Ann feels as a result of her pregnancy echoes the cultural alienation she feels among Noah’s friends and family.