About the Book
Ann Tran is already at a crossroads when she gets the call that her beloved grandmother, Minh, has died. Ann has built a seemingly perfect life. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away with one positive pregnancy test.
With both her relationship and her carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Hu’o’ng. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who’s always held them together.
Running parallel to this is Minh’s story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House’s attic, long-buried secrets come to light, revealing how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life.
Format: Hardback (336 pages) Publisher: Quercus
Publication date: 27th June 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
The story is told from the point of view of three Vietnamese American women – Minh, her daughter Hu’o’ng and Hu’o’ng’s daughter, Ann. Ann’s story is set in the present day but Hu’o’ng’s moves back and forth in time between her childhood in Vietnam and her life in America. Minh’s story is told through an unique perspective: from beyond the grave where she exists in a kind of limbo, able to observe Ann and Hu’o’ng’s grief at her death but also to relive memories of her early life in Vietnam before she was forced to flee to America because of the Vietnam War.
The mysterious, rambling and now rather dilapidated Banyan House has played an important part in all three women’s lives. For Minh it was a tangible sign of of her entrepreneurial spirit and determination to provide a secure home for her children. For Hu’o’ng and Ann it has acted at various times as a place of sanctuary. It has also witnessed dramatic events, as the reader will discover.
Minh’s death brings Ann and Hu’o’ng back to Banyan House after a period of estrangement. Initially, their grief is the only thing that seems to connect them. ‘We’re lost without her, our faithful interpreter.’ Gradually the author allows the reader to unpick the complex reasons for their estrangement – feelings of being abandoned, of being displaced or being misunderstood. The process of repairing their relationship is made up of tentative steps: small acts of kindness, unexpected discoveries, reassurance and ultimately a shared stake in the future.
All three women are believable characters, each having endured heartbreak and struggled with the realities of motherhood. None of them are infallible and all have made mistakes, saying things in anger or frustration that can’t be unsaid. What draws one into the story is seeing how they move on from this. I enjoyed Ann’s spiky, sarcastic humour, which you suspect is something of a protective carapace, and her growing determination to make an independent life for herself. Learning more of Hu’o’ng’s back story made me admire her strength, something obviously inherited from her mother who, even when dying, refused to go quietly. The author resists the temptation to make the male characters either wholly good or bad although some definitely tend more towards the latter.
There are subtle references to the prejudice faced by immigrants – for example, Ann being described as ‘exotic’ by her boyfriend’s mother and Hu’o’ng’s experiences on her honeymoon. It’s notable that, in contrast to other family members, Minh, Hu’o’ng and Ann nurture their Vietnamese heritage whether that’s through the food, religious practices or inherited stories of their culture.
Ann and Hu’o’ng’s quiet journey to reconciliation threatens to be derailed by Ann’s discovery of a secret that Minh has kept from her daughter. Should she tell Hu’o’ng, possibly tainting her memories of her mother or keep it to herself? As Minh warns from beyond the grave, secrets are a menace. ‘They will spill from your mouth like angry, writhing eels, or they will fill you up until you combust. There is no escaping them.’
I thoroughly enjoyed this absorbing multi-generational story about love, loss, motherhood and the healing of fractured family relationships. It’s an impressive debut.
My thanks to Patrice at Quercus for my review copy.
In three words: Intimate, insightful, emotional
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About the Author
Thao Thai is a writer living in Ohio with her husband and daughter. Her work engages with tangled family relationships and the intersections of motherhood and identity. She’s been published in Cup of Jo, Eater, Catapult, Sunday Long Read, and more. A recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she has also been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and earned fellowships in creative writing. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University and her MA from the University of Chicago.
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