Closing the book, my mind kept wandering around the short story Eating Pain .

Director Viet Linh used a true story in Le Monde newspaper about the mother of a murderer - who had committed a shocking murder - coming to apologize to the victim's family.

Because of her limited French, she told journalists: "I want to eat their pain" (je veux manger leur douleur).

To others, it may be a small detail; but to Viet Linh, that mother said a word "appropriate for the painful mood".

She wrote "life is still beautiful when we still feel like eating other people's pain".

In Lest the Ashes Fly Away , there are many small, fragile, sometimes "slippery" moments that no one notices, but the author wants to cherish them "to the fullest".

As the preface says, Viet Linh's words "of course are not powerful enough to change the world" but they will "quietly accompany the readers".

Sometimes it's the story of two strange shirts in an old man's life; the story of an old woman selling fruit yelling at the mice to "run away" when someone poured boiling water down the drain.

Sometimes it's the story of a girl who, after 24 days of being a bride in a foreign land, dies...

The author takes material from stories around him and from reading in newspapers, stories here and there, this year and that year, but they are all profound stories of life and people. Van Viet Linh is frugal with words, but passionate and warm.

Viet Linh also devoted many pages to the "cinema station" that she worships. Along with that are comments, reflections, expressing her sharp and open perspective on the phenomena of "laughing to tears", "sometimes words are lamentations"... in life.

The book "The Ashes of the Sky" is over 300 pages thick, each article is about a few hundred words, or even less, including a part of the content that appeared in the book "Five Minutes with the Station" (2014), now re-collected.

The narrative tone is leisurely, natural, sometimes intimate, sometimes objective and cold.

However, when we put all the words aside, we see a deep, calm self that sees life like a drop of clear water. There, small, fragmented stories have great power.

Viet Linh loves to observe, loves to think and loves to record to remember, to record before it turns to ashes and flies away.

But unlike movies or theater, she does not intentionally "look" at life, but lets life "pin" into her mind. From there, she writes down her most compelling emotions, confiding in others and herself. Many times, the author herself feels... tortured because of her sensitivity.