To date, a concise biography of Trần Lệ Xuân or 'Madame Nhu' is yet to appear in the English language. As the title implies, this book covers the author's search for the Ngô regime's notorious First Lady and the scraps of information she was fed through sporadic long-distance contact, rather than an objective study of the historical figure. Though some much needed light is shed on the life and times of Xuân, I am left with questions relating to a rumored autobiography in the author's possession and, perhaps as a consequence, the overall validity of this book. ( )

Having recently reviewed a shameful, utterly dishonest biography of Ngô Đình Diệm, the premier/President of South Vietnam during the Kennedy regime (1954-1963), it might be refreshing to consider the attitudes and antics of his sister-in-law, Trần Lệ Xuân, more popularly known as Madame Nhu. Her name is probably forgotten today by anyone under the age of sixty, but she was a character for the ages: high-born, stunningly beautiful, and totally ruthless in her pursuit of what she saw as Vietnam's good, and her husband's: she married Ngô Đình Nhu, Diệm's brother, at the age of 22. They remained together until his death in 1963, in the coup that overthrew the Diệm regime.

Predictably, the Western press called Madame Nhu a "dragon lady," for her beautiful wardrobe, her long, lacquered nails, and most of all her outspoken nature. (The Vietnamese preferred to call her "the Tiger Lady," because dragons are sacred in their culture.) She was an ardent and sincere Catholic, and successfully introduced laws forbidding divorce, birth control, and abortion. Such measures were not widely appreciated in Vietnam.

Wherever she went, in Asia or the United States, she was reviled by many, adored by a few, and noticed by everyone. Her tongue was so sharp, and so eagerly employed, that she would have made Hillary Clinton look like a shrinking violet, and she would have eaten Sarah Palin for breakfast. (The exigencies of history require an occasional mixed metaphor.) She could be heartless: when the rebellion of Buddhist monks led to mass self-immolations, she said, "Next time I'll bring the gasoline and the matches," and called these suicides "barbecues."

And yet . . . she was not a creature of unalloyed evil. She had a dreadful, poverty-stricken upbringing, but would become an excellent mother. She was unquestionably patriotic: for good or ill, she truly loved Vietnam more than her own life.

The author of this very fine book spent many, many hours talking with Madame Nhu, on the phone and in person, when she (Nhu) was living out her old age in Paris. Ms. Demery is too wise, and too realistic, to portray Madame Nhu as a heroine or a monster: people are more complicated than that. She was a strong, unique woman, and if she indulged her hatreds, she also symbolized power and freedom to generations of young Asian girls. If she was a Vietnamese Lady Macbeth, I believe that the role was thrust upon her by circumstance.

Highly recommended. ( )

Summary: A biography of Madame Nhu, part of the ruling family in Vietnam (1954-1963) based on the author’s personal interactions with Madame Nhu before her death, allowing her to obtain memoirs and a diary of her life.

She grew up in a distinguished Vietnamese family in Hanoi under the French, receiving the typical French education, with the expectation of being married off into another distinguished family. At nineteen Tran Le Xuan married Ngo Dinh Nhu, in the middle of World War 2 as the Vichy French enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Japanese. At the end of the war, the French assumption that they could resume control of the colony was upset by nationalist forces under Ho Chi Min and the Viet Minh. Madame Nhu engages in a harrowing flight with her children, only reunited with her husband later. They take refuge in the mountain retreat of Dalat while war goes on between France and the Viet Minh. The French lose a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu, resulting in a division of the country into north and south with Madame Nhu’s brother-in-law Ngo Dinh Diem heading the government with her husband as his right hand man.

At first it seems the model family, buttressed by Diem’s austere integrity. Madame Nhu raises children and leads efforts to help women while the men run the country. Increasingly as dissatisfaction arises and Communist insurgency by the Viet Cong grows, Madame Nhu asserts herself increasingly at points where the two men waver, sometimes courageously against opposition. She becomes known as the Dragon Lady, not to be crossed. When Buddhists use self-immolation to protest government restrictions on their religious freedom, she tells those threatening to go ahead and she would bring the matches. Her efforts to strengthen the government lead to the disaffection of the people, and confounds the US Kennedy administration, now committed to the success of the Republic of South Vietnam. Increasingly the conviction is that the Diem government must go, and the Kennedys and ambassador Lodge conspire for a coup to bring down the government, succeeding at the end of October 1963 when Nhu and Diem both are killed. Madame Nhu, touring the US to drum up support for the government escapes death to live in exile for the rest of her life.

One may find much of this in any history. The unusual element of this book is Monique Brinson Demery’s narrative of her attempts, beginning in 2005, to connect with Madame Nhu to hear her side of the story. After numerous efforts received no response, she got a call one day laying down strict conditions. Then more calls in which Madame Nhu tested her to see if she could be trusted. There were invitations to meet. Madame Nhu never showed up. Meanwhile the author obtained a diary in Madame Nhu’s hand from a serviceman, filling in more of her personal narrative and leading to more questions. Madame Nhu dangled a manuscript of a memoir in front of her in exchange for more favors and more strict conditions. Finally she obtains it, a manuscript in very unfinished form that she must publish as is.

In 2011 Madame Nhu died. The author didn’t publish the manuscript but instead this book of her search for and interactions with Madame Nhu, interleaved with a biography of her life, informed by research and the new materials in Madame Nhu’s hand she received. What emerges is a portrait of a woman in an unhappy marriage longing for so much more who eventually finds it in the cause of the Diem government. We see a mother who loves her children, who acts with courage, but also with ruthlessness, and who pushes the boundaries of what women could do in her society. One also has the sense of a family increasingly isolated from the aspirations of the people, confounding American support, and yet also the first step into the developing American tragedy that was Vietnam. Like Iraq, they were eliminated with no replacement in sight, resulting in a series of weak governments, a growing American involvement propping up that government and the fall of the south to the Communists in 1975.

Demery offers a concise retelling of this tragic history through Madame Nhu’s eyes while remaining objective and able to see her faults, faults that contributed to her family’s downfall and the unraveling of the country. Even in her old age, in her interactions with Demery, we see a woman who uses manipulation to try to tell her story her way, against the grain of reality. She tells the story of a woman alone, fighting to the end to validate her life as meaningful. ( )

History and politics are my favorite topics for nonfiction reading. This biography of notorious Madame Nhu enticed me from the moment it was discussed in a program segment on NPR. Since so little is known of the Dragon Lady of Vietnam, the biography is fascinating. I must extend caution, however. Demery claims she is in possession of Madame Nhu's memoirs, though it does not seem from the author's commentary that much of these memoirs made it into her biography of Madame Nhu. Demery also talks considerably of documents and photographs that never materialize in the pages of this book -- most notably Madame Nhu's diary, which was smuggled out of the palace shortly after the coup. The biography would have been made stronger if these images and detailed excerpts would have been (could have been?) included. I can only hope that Demery thought it best to first present the bare bones of Madame Nhu using their personal (if tenuous) relationship as the backdrop to the narrative. Once interest swells, I hope she has planned to follow this first biography with a more comprehensive view of the archives in her possession. ( )

Slow to start, and almost clunky, what begins as a mix of itinerary notes and travelogs, morphs into a diary and a history lesson of a turbulent time in history for Vietnam and America. A fierce, tenacious woman, Madame Nhu was at one time an apocryphal figure in politics and Asian regime machinations, but disappeared into the background as history moved forward.

Monique Brinson Demery details the frustrations of tracking down the elusive Dragon Lady. During her search, we get a history lesson, and suffer through the trials of detective work. After successfully finding Madame Nhu, the target of this adventure remains elusive throughout, yet still gives a wonderful insight into her history and of the life her family lived, from French Indochina until the coup that started the fall of South Vietnam. Demery's writing and the subject pulls you in at the end, filling in and pulling together details not widely known about the varied times of Southern Asia. ( )