The Mountains Sing - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Blog Tour)

Date of Reading: 19/08/2020

Author:  Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai 

Publisher: Oneworld 

Publication Date: August 20, 2020

Rating: 4.5/5

(This review is part of the blog tour organised by Random Things Tours)

About the book:

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War. Tran Dieu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. This is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel in English. 

Review:

        Covering four generations of the Tran family, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's epic family saga represents Vietnam at its best and also at its worst. Told through the words of Huong and her grandmother Dieu Lan, what we find is a mother's fortitude and desire for peace undiminished even at the darkest hours. Fast-paced it maybe, but that doesn't make it an easy read; the heartbreaking narrative leaves you often in turmoil, exposed to a part of history that we prefer to forget.

        I loved Dieu Lan from the beginning; it is hard not to admire and bow down before her resilient heart that lived through the Japanese atrocities, the Communist party's brutal Land Reforms, the partition and the Vietnam war. Her loved ones being killed in front of her eyes, she is left with the task of protecting her six children and keeping them together as a family. Most perilous is the battle with her inner demons, especially when the once chubby-cheeked darlings turn out to be the victims of government's propagandist messages.

        Huong represents the author's own voice, a generation that managed to live through the war but not unscathed; the hope of a nation that is slowly being rebuilt from the ashes. They are forced to accept, forgive and move on. And that is what this novel exhorts, not to seek retribution but to move forward with forgiveness in your hearts.

        Interspersed with Vietnamese proverbs and descriptions of the land that regrows each time, this beautiful story is all about a nation's will to survive, refusing to fall back. Thank you, Anne Carter, for this blog tour invite, I feel honoured to have the opportunity to read and review this gem of a book.

Meet the author:

Born into the Việt Nam War in 1973, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up witnessing the war’s devastation and its aftermath. She worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. She has been honoured with many awards, including the Poetry of the Year 2010 Award from the Hà Nội Writers Association, as well as many grants and fellowships. Quế Mai has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She currently divides her time between Indonesia and Việt Nam.