The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Release: March 17th 2020
Format: Ebook
Publisher: OneWorld Publications
Source: Random Things Tours
Find it at: Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N,Kobo, GooglePlay , IndieBound

The Mountains Sing is an epic account of Viet Nam’s painful 20th century history. It is both vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting. —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

The Mountains Sing has the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan. It tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War. Born in 1920, Tran Dieu Lan had to forcefully flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform due rise of Communist government in the North. Later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age. Meanwhile her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict. This Conflict will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart.

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

About 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. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and translated and published in more than 10 countries, including Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. She is a recepient of 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.

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The Mountains Sing Review:

I don’t think I have read a story which was so gut-wrenching, raw, and so beautiful.

Firstly, I loved how the author split the story into two parallels, one focusing on the Grandmother Trấn Diệu Lan, and the other on the granddaughter Hủỏng. While the two stories take place in different eras, it was interesting to see the similarities and challenges both characters face. I also liked how the characters interloped between the two stories, connecting them to each other.

This book was heart-wrenching to read at times, mainly due to the brutal hardship the characters endure. They go through some of the worst things that a person can go through, and it was so difficult to read without getting emotional. Moreover, the author mentions about how the invasion of the Japanese, Americans and the French disrupted Vietnam as a country.

Also, the author tells the story in a beautiful manner, nearly covering around 80 years of the family saga. Her style of writing is very simple and easy to follow. However, while I liked the various Vietnamese phrases incorporated, I wish the author provided a glossary to understand the dialogues. Also, I felt like, at times, the characters were too modern for their time. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but sometimes the Grandmother felt modernized with her views of society and people for that era, and it felt disconnected with the timeline.

However, I really loved everything about this story from its family saga and how they survive and persevere, to the historical details put in. Moreover, the author has a beautiful poetic style of writing and I really love the way she visualized the tale. Overall, this is a wonderful novel worth reading.