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nini23's review against another edition
3.0
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.
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
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Blood, Gore, Rape, and Addiction
Minor: Ableism and Excrement
bessadams's review against another edition
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: War and Violence
Moderate: Torture, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Excrement, Death, Death of parent, Classism, Cancer, Abortion, Bullying, Alcoholism, Child death, and Child abuse
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Rape
carlafiorenzo's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Suicide attempt, Infidelity, Child death, Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, Racism, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Vomit, Abandonment, War, Body horror, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, Blood, Chronic illness, Classism, Racial slurs, Colonisation, Gun violence, Pregnancy, Addiction, Alcohol, Grief, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child abuse, Death, Excrement, Hate crime, Fire/Fire injury, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide
tumbleweedreads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Violence, Rape, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Classism
Moderate: Abortion, Suicide, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Alcoholism, and Child death
Minor: Chronic illness and Excrement
ktrecs's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
The scope and breadth of this novel is ambitious, and, I think, perhaps its downfall. In trying to show so much of Viet Nam's history, the narrative jumps through time in an inconsistent way, especially in Grandma Dieu Lan's perspective. In being tailored for a unfamiliar audience, the narration includes jarring moments, especially in the first half of the novel, where the prose digresses into unnecessary historical facts and figures, breaking the stride of the novel's plot and undercutting its heart. In being written for an English-speaking audience, words in Vietnamese are almost always followed by a shoehorned definition, making the narrative voice feel clunky and inauthentic in places, especially in dialogue. At the beginning, especially in audiobook format, these peculiarities made it difficult for me to become immersed in the story and attached to the characters. It was not at all that the information was there; I am extremely grateful for the context and knowledge, just that I felt that the more non-fiction elements were less thematically successful and articulated with less poise and beauty, than the emotional core of the novel.
But by the 50% mark, I was hooked. I have trouble DNFing books and books like this are exactly why. Had I decided to set this book aside I'd have missed the growth and nuance in the later half. All throughout, the prose is alternatively lush and crushing, evocative and tender. Each scene is built with such precision and care. Each generation of the Tran family is weaved carefully into the structure of the novel, part epistolary, part oral tradition, stories upon stories, realistic and compelling. As Hương ages and time inexorably moves forward, the tale becomes more intimate somehow. The poetic close of the novel drew its themes together perfectly, leaving us with a vision of hope and peace even throughout the dark events laid out in the past. The intimacy of it brings the personal into the political in an unforgettable way.
Nguyen Phan Que Mai's voice is clear, profound and powerful, and I will certainly look forward to encountering it again.
But by the 50% mark, I was hooked. I have trouble DNFing books and books like this are exactly why. Had I decided to set this book aside I'd have missed the growth and nuance in the later half. All throughout, the prose is alternatively lush and crushing, evocative and tender. Each scene is built with such precision and care. Each generation of the Tran family is weaved carefully into the structure of the novel, part epistolary, part oral tradition, stories upon stories, realistic and compelling. As Hương ages and time inexorably moves forward, the tale becomes more intimate somehow. The poetic close of the novel drew its themes together perfectly, leaving us with a vision of hope and peace even throughout the dark events laid out in the past. The intimacy of it brings the personal into the political in an unforgettable way.
Nguyen Phan Que Mai's voice is clear, profound and powerful, and I will certainly look forward to encountering it again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Murder, Violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Abortion, Alcoholism, Cancer, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Torture
Minor: Animal death, Cursing, Excrement, and Suicidal thoughts
womanwill's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
- 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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Child death, Death, Violence, and Excrement
Moderate: Blood, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Medical content, Confinement, Addiction, and Alcoholism
Minor: Cancer and Abortion
storiesofsophie's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-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? It's complicated
5.0
A great, emotional book. Deeply examines the tensions between Northern and Southern Vietnam.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Rape and Abortion
Minor: Alcoholism, Police brutality, Blood, Cancer, Excrement, Genocide, Gore, and Gun violence
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