Reviews with content warning for War - The Mountains Sing

The Mountains Sing is an internationally acclaimed debut novel by Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. She is the author of eight books in Vietnamese but this is her first in English, the achievement all the more remarkable for having started learning English in grade eight.

The positives first. This multigenerational sweeping saga of the Trần family told via alternating narrators of Trần Diệu Lan and her granddaughter Hương is clearly a labour of love. The opening scene of grandmother Trần carrying Hương on her back desperately seeking an unoccupied bomb shelter while American B-52 bombers are approaching Hà Nội is riveting (Quế Mai shares her inspiration for this opening here https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/author-spotlight-nguyen-phan-que-mai). I also really liked the Vietnamese proverbs sprinkled throughout the book, well-suited to the situation at hand. The Vietnamese culture and sense of family that permeates the whole novel makes it a rich offering.

As readers, we are given a whirlwind snapshot of the tumultuous events that Việt Nam and her people go through: the French Occupation, the American War, Japanese invasion, the Great Hunger, Land Reform, North-South conflict, formation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. By necessity, there is no in-depth focus on any one event, each of them a momentous one forming historical epochs. I personally would have preferred more of a zooming in, as it felt like this family was incessantly pounded by one traumatic event after another. For example, I would have liked to read more about how North Vietnamese people like Auntie Hanh and progeny are bullied and discriminated against in Sài Gòn in the late 1970s due to remaining acrimony between North and South.

Not all the inflictors of misery and war (foreign or internal) are appropriated the same blame. Hương on reading an American book realizes 'they're just like us,' the 7.6 million tons of bombs and over 20 million gallons of herbicides like Agent Orange dropped by American aircraft curiously given short shrift. The latter causing not only widespread ecological damage but physiologic human harm is mainly illustrated through karmic retribution for the evil Communist supporters. The peasants who have the gall to demand land from this benevolent angelic wealthy landowner family are singularly depicted as avaricious, uncouth, filthy. At times, we are given an inadvertent glimpse at the inequalities; while neighbours are scrabbling for food, grandma and granddaughter are surreptitiously designing and building a spacious three bedroom house. To appease local fury, they 'generously' manipulate the local council into digging a local well too. Crumbs for the sparrows. As young Hương is able to afford more conspicuous material goods such as a bicycle and foreign books, her friends/neighbours shun her but they are just jealous and she doesn't need them anyway because she has her book characters to keep her company. If you want to find out who the good characters are, they are the ones who read. Excepting reading communist propaganda, of course. Tâm, Hương's beau, might as well have a halo over his head other than the stain of having a relative on the 'wrong' side. It’s like watching a simplistic morality play. I am also rather appalled by the self-loathing that Ngoc, Hương's mother, was made to go through for what is a sensible decision. In addition, the writing of her character as a doctor especially in her personal journal is not realistic.

Some of the 'lessons' imparted seem like platitudes in the form of aphorisms - everything happens for a reason, if we all read each other, there would be no war.

I never really felt like I had a good sense of the characters or any progress in characterization. Trần Diệu Lan is emblematic of resilience, of blazoning courage, of being a survivor against all odds. She values her burgeoning family, even the brainwashed ones, welcoming them warmly back to the family bosom once they see the erroneousness of their views. She forgives serenely all who wronged her. She reminds me of the stories that my mother told me of my grandmother: she was the bestest mother, wise and forgiving beyond belief, survivor of the Japanese occupation, miraculously managing to feed the large family against great hardship. It's part of the family legend that some rich neighbour offered to buy some of the children but my grandparents steadfastly refused. I don't doubt she was that but I also wonder what kept her up at night, what personal resentments she harboured that she never confided in her children, what aspirations she had. The last time I spoke to my grandmother before her passing was when she was in the midst of advanced dementia and diabetic complications but I will never forget how she momentarily broke out of her fog to ask me if I thought there was a god.

What I am clumsily expressing is that I think the book would have benefitted from more nuance but despite the heavy-handedness and bias, I still appreciate having read it. Lest it be misunderstood, I would welcome reading more Vietnamese perspective books and definitely not any from foreign aggressors/occupiers.

Content Warnings

sehenry20's review against another edition

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challenging sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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anna_pizzichidilibri's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes

3.75

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savvylit's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Mountains Sing is a story of resilience and boundless familial love. In 1975, we follow Huong and her grandmother Dieu Lan as they try to survive bombing and its aftermath in Hanoi. In 1955, we follow Dieu Lan through her early village life in Northern Vietnam in the face of the immense cruelty of the Communist government. Dieu Lan's life in both eras is almost unimaginably difficult. Yet she manages to cleverly and bravely persevere despite all challenges. More than anything, the driving force of Dieu Lan's strength - and this whole novel - is devotion. Devotion to her family is what consistently sustains Dieu Lan on even her darkest days.

What truly makes this novel shine is the personal tone of the entire story. Huong's recollections feel diaristic and Dieu Lan's story is entirely addressed to Huong. When Nguyen reveals in the acknowledgments that The Mountains Sing was directly inspired by the lives of her family members and friends' families, it came as no surprise to me.

The Mountains Sing is the first book that prolific author Nguyen Phan Que Mai ever wrote in English, her second language. I have seen a handful of criticism of this novel that states that the writing is too simple or repetitive. First of all, I challenge those reviewers to consider writing an entire narrative in a second language. Second of all, I think that the bittersweet beauty and strength of this story overrides any supposed less-sophisticated diction.

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lightsleeper_heavydreamer's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This was a wonderful family saga and I cried and learned a lot! The things I knew about Vietnamese history I mostly had from museums, this book brought history to life in all its tragedy, cruelty, all its sorrow and grief, all its persistence and kindness and love. At times this story is almost unbeatably sad and I felt so much for the family and everything they had to go through but it also managed to be hopeful throughout. The women here are so strong for their persistence and their unwillingness to give in or to lose their kindness.
Highly recommended the audio book, there's so many Vietnamese proverbs in this and hearing them spoken by a Vietnamese speaker and not just reading them wrongly in my head.

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aquamarinecadet's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

it hurt to read this.
do you feel like a rather gruesome, inspiringly hopeful but incredibly sad war torn intergenerational trauma family saga? then this book is for you 😀

"What my uncle said made me think. I had resented America, too.

But by reading their books, I saw the other side of them-their humanity. Somehow I was sure that if people were willing to read each other, and see the light of other cultures, there would be no war on earth."

4.5 stars because there are things that distract from the story that i feel could have been better written: funky pacing at times, and the last letter declaration-

nobody writes letters like that 😭 it was a not-at-all-subtle literary device, as were some of the characters!! who sometimes seemed to appear more as statements than full fledged characters.

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bessadams's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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