Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Build Your House Around My Body

Set entirely in Vietnam, Build Your House Around My Body is a slow burn. It takes its time introducing the different timelines and developing the characters. It paints a vivid portrait of Vietnam, both rural and urban. Aside from the mysterious atmosphere of the novel, this was definitely my favourite aspect. Vietnamese cuisine and culture are described in detail, with entire pages dedicated to traditional food and customs.

The unifying threads of the novel are supernatural. Ghosts are real. They walk among us. Vietnamese folklore comes to life and trauma manifests itself in concrete, terrifying ways. However, as the author mentions in an interview, the real spook in the novel is colonialism. Bouncing back and forth from 1945 to 2011, Build Your House Around My Body covers many turning points in Vietnam’s history and the impact the war had on the people.

The plot revolves around 2 women. Both of them disappear in mysterious circumstances, years apart. Winnie, an American Vietnamese, arrives in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City since 1976) in 2010 to distance herself from her family and start over. However, she is not mentally stable and starts doing everything in her power to erase herself. Winnie is gliding through life like a ghost. She strives to become invisible. At work, on the street, and even in small groups of people. Violet Kupersmith does a fantastic job exploring mental health, identity, and belonging through Winnie’s slow descent into madness.

Binh, on the other hand, is full of life, determined to have her way regardless of the consequences. She grows up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, unable (and unwilling) to leave her hometown as all the other young adults move to big cities to try their luck.

Winnie and Binh are opposites in character. They belong to different worlds and yet their destinies are linked.

Build Your House Around My Body is a haunting journey throughout time across Vietnam.

I recommend this, especially if you enjoy slow burns and fantasy/supernatural elements.

Content Warnings

regal_leaves's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith is a a creepy, fever dream of a novel about two young women who go missing decades apart, both are fearless and lost. And they will both have their revenge.

Right off the bat – this book is like nothing I’ve read before and in all honestly I don’t know how to describe the experience of reading it. There’s magical realism, ghosts, two headed serpents and so much more that will have you on the edge of your seat while reading.

For the most part we’re trying to piece together Winnie’s story as we learn of her disappearance in the first chapter. There are a handful of intertwined timelines that all drop breadcrumbs of information, building to build a complex puzzle of anguish and horror set over several decades.

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