All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien review - Picking up the pieces after a brother's murder

A brutal murder lies at the heart of this novel. The death of her brother Denny leads Ky Tran to return home to Cabramatta, and to try and find out what happened. As her investigation proceeds, we enter a complex world of memory, culture and racism.

Ky has largely done what was expected of her, achieving good academic results and a job as a journalist. Her friend from school, Minnie (Minh Le), is far more acerbic and outspoken, calling out racism and hypocrisy. Although she has not seen Minnie for many years, Ky carries her voice within her, allowing Minnie to say things internally that Ky doesn't speak out loud. For example, when she visits the police station to find out more about her brother's death, Minnie's imagined voice is both encouraging and poking fun at Ky.

No one at the police station speaks Vietnamese. The book is set in the 1990s, during a surge in heroin-related crime. Ky suspects that her brother may have become involved in crime. Her mother refers to "naughty" kids, which seems to mean anyone who doesn't do what they should, ranging from truancy to involvement in the heroin trade.

Apart from the monolingual police station, memories of school show the system of racism in which Ky, Minnie and Denny grew up. Teachers can not pronounce "Ky" properly, even after she has corrected them many times. Another teacher thought, before arriving, that Cabramatta sounded like an Italian word. Ky is always the "monster" in games played with white girls, and her unusual Cabbage Patch Kid is a focus here. The description of the creation of this doll is at once moving and funny; Lien does a brilliant job of using everyday items to show how racism informs the children's upbringing. Once again it is Minnie who calls out Ky for taking up the role assigned to her by the dominant clique.

The Vietnam War is very much a presence in the book; what seems a paranoid fear of outsiders is linked to refugees' experiences of losing everything. A couple is kept from marrying as the potential husband was from the north of Vietnam and therefore associated with Communism.

At the centre of everything in All That's Left Unsaid is the unflinching, fierce character of Minnie, frequently subjected to abuse as a child. I desperately wanted to know more about Minnie's fate after the end of the book. Lien has succeeded in creating a character who will stay with the reader for a very long time.

This is an important and often beautiful book, in which the investigation of a death reveals far more than mere clues. History, memory and character are brought together in a novel of depth and insight.