SOURCE: Ford, Mark. “Purple Days.” London Review of Books 16, no. 9 (12 May 1994): 24-5.

In the following review, Ford compares the stories in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain to other works focusing on the Vietnam War, praising Butler's unique and subtle treatment of South Vietnamese immigrants.

George Bush's proud declaration that by bombing fleeing Iraqi soldiers America had ‘kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,’ was one of the more startling instances from recent years of the Vietnam War's continuing hold on the American imagination. One could just about suspend disbelief when Sylvester Stallone set about rewriting history, but it was disconcerting to find the President of the United States so clearly in the grip of the same fantasy of revenge.

The internal strife bequeathed by Vietnam has proved almost as intractable as the war itself. As everyone knows, more American soldiers have killed themselves—often after...