Review by sasaboba - Banyan Moon

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sasaboba 's review for:

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

5.0

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious 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

6 stars

discontent is our family's curse. it is also, perhaps, the thing that let us survive in unfamiliar places.

on the rare occasion i talk about my mother, my therapist asks, "why do you protect your mother? why do you think you owe her love? you sacrifice so much even after everything she's done to you and everything she never did or said." even when i'm able to explain, i don't think she understands. thao thai understands.

banyan moon expertly captures vietnamese diaspora women's intergenerational love borne from intergenerational trauma. it was really difficult for me to read huong's chapters because she is so much like my mother. as i was reading, i had the same knee-jerk reactions that ann did in a way that says on the surface that i don't care, but i secretly do and i know the sacrifices my mother has made. thao thai doesn't excuse any of the wrongs that the women do. her narrative choices hit like a truck and the impact of her words are visceral. i sobbed many times, sometimes to the point of giving myself a headache. also having minh's past revealed while she haunts and guards her girls as a ghost in the present was such a creative decision that only thao thai could've pulled off (not a spoiler; it's in the synopsis).

there isn't a single thing i hated about this book except that the audiobook is narrated only by 1 vietnamese person out of 3 narrators. the other two narrators fumbled on the majority of the pronunciations, making it grating to listen to while reading. "phuoc" sounds like "fuck", "huong" sounds like "hwung" or "hong" (like the color "red" in mandarin), "con" sounds the dog toy "kong." as talented as the non-viet performers are, i wish audiobook producers would stop hiring just any asian person as if we're all the same. there are so many vietnamese narrators out there who would've done this project justice. lastly, i think cindy kay narrates for ann's chapters and her (or the director's) choice to make ann's mom's voice sound like a grandmother was jarring because her mom (huong) and grandmother (minh) are both vital characters with their own narrations. i wondered why nobody corrected her because the scratchy, grumpy, old lady, vocal caricature kay did for huong (ann's mom) wasn't even close to resembling the actual character narrated by catherine ho. elyse dinh did a phenomenal job and i wish she was the sole narrator if they weren't going to hire 2 more vietnamese performers. the audiobook is a confusing mess so skip it if you know you won't be able to overlook these things.

banyan moon is hard to read only because of the realities i personally had to face (see also the trigger warnings). it's raw, and emotional, and i loved every second of it. it's vengeful, it's dreamy, it's resilience, and it's one of the best (debut) contemporary novels i've ever read. i wish i could read it again for the first time because it was such a unique and beautiful experience. i look forward to more from thao thai.

Content Warnings