Reviews with content warning for Blood - 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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moniipeters's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.5

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greatlibraryofalexandra's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

This is a spectacular book. Its lyrical and breathtaking and sweeping in scope. It taught me I know nothing about the Viet Nam war. It's got all of the depth and sprawl of books like 'Pachinko' and 'Peach Blossom Spring' and the epic staying power of novels like 'Homegoing' and 'Infinite Country' and everything Khaled Hosseini has ever written. It was riveting and searing.

It could also be frustrating; despite how much I loved the book, I often felt like the characters were almost too naïve deliberately so the author could use them as a mouthpiece for philosophical arguments; i.e. Huong being 15 and not understanding what rape is so that the book can make the argument that no one should be shamed for violence inflicted upon them. There were other instances of this that tested believability, but for me it didn't drag down the impact of the novel. I'd recommend this to anyone and it will have a permanent place on my bookshelf and rotation of revered books.

I will say that I almost, almost knocked this down one star because I thought it was so unbelievably stupid that Tam's grandfather was Wicked Ghost. That was too much for me, too 'connected', and even though it resolved well, I hated it.

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now_booking's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Wow. I’ve known about this novel for ages not least of all because I have many friends on Bookstagram who’ve raved about it for years. The truth is they just might have undersold it. This is a truly brilliant, compellingly-told multigenerational family saga that is filled with so much life and tragedy but yet so much hope for healing and reconciliation even in the face of hardship.

First of all, I entered this book not knowing much about Vietnamese history beyond America’s interventionist role in it, the dispute in America around their own involvement, and the resultant mess left behind. To my knowledge, contemporary Vietnam is a gorgeous place that tourists visit and that is on my bucket list to go to. Yet outside of this perspective, I’d never really experienced Vietnam from its own perspective as the subject of its own story rather than through a Western lens. Knowing my own family’s experience of war and occupation in my own country, I know the story is never simple and not everyone will agree with this author’s approach to telling this story or perspectives on historical events as reflected through Huong and her grandmother, Diêu Lan. That said, from my perspective as an international reader, I think the author tells an eminently and universally human story where if we acknowledge the commonality of of our humanity, we will understand that there are no real winners in war.

Diêu Lan is clearly the star of this book even if Huang’s voice remains strong throughout. Sometimes with books about characters that are resilient in the face of incredible trauma and hardship, the inspiration they provide as strong characters can simultaneously feel a little dismissive of the magnitude and impact of the suffering of others- sort of like “if Diêu Lan can move on and keep going, why can’t you? If she can forgive, something must be wrong with you that you can’t.” I think this book approaches this sensibly. Diêu Lan has Pollyanna ways, but she also feels deeply her grief and processes it through her faith. And through that faith, she’s also able to accept people (her children, for example) at different stages of grief and anger and PTSD without judgement and without insisting on her own approach or perspective. I loved how pragmatic she was but also how loving and how emotional. For me, her story was a coming of age story that revealed a lot about how much her family and the way she was raised set her up to face some of the challenges she did in her life. Huang’s story was a parallel coming of age story but more reflective of our journey as readers being novices in Vietnamese history or in Diêu Lan’s life and maturing as we read to a state of of not quite full adulthood, greater understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives and experiences that can be true and the commonality of suffering of everyday people in a war.

The language in this book was absolutely gorgeous, the use of proverbs and stories and viewing the world through a rich lens of culture and traditions, lent authenticity to the history we were reading. This was absolutely tragic but it never felt like grief porn, your heart was broken but in Diêu Lan’s resilience, it was healed again. Even in difficult moments, I was drawn to this and could hardly put it down. This is absolutely my favourite read so far this year and a new all time fave that will stick with me for a long time. I can’t recommend this enough.

Content Warnings

annorabrady's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I loved the look into the history of Vietnam through the generations. The characters and their stories were fully fleshed such that it reads more like a memoir than a historical fiction.

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franklola's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

beca's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

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