It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. A sweeping, evocative family saga, set against the backdrop of twentieth century Việt Nam.
Born in Vietnam in 1973, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up in the aftermath of the war and witnessed its devastation on her country. She worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. Her work has received the Hanoi Writers Association 'Poetry of the Year' Award (2010). She lives with her family in Jakarta.
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About the book
Born in 1920, Tran Dieu Lan and her family lost everything when the Communist government came to power in North Việt Nam. Forced to flee with her six children, she knows she must do whatever it takes to keep her family alive.
Fifty years later, her country is again at war, and her young granddaughter Huong grieves the loss of her parents, who have disappeared to the South along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Vivid, compelling and deeply moving, The Mountains Sing introduces a Vietnamese voice to the post-war literary canon. Drawing on her family history, and the stories of other survivors, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s debut novel in English, brings to life the true human cost of a devastating war, and the improbable power of hope to sustain us when all seems lost.
I think it's important to note that the majority of books written about Vietnam tend to be written from the perspective of the outsider, occupier or the invader. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai tells it from the perspective of the insider, albeit a fictional story mixed with factual memories and eyewitness accounts.
The story is told by the grandmother Trấn Diệu Lan and Hủỏng her granddaughter. Some of the scenes are set before the 1970s and told in first-person by the grandmother and others post 1970 by the granddaughter. Often the story is narrated by Trấn Diệu Lan as a young woman, whilst in the next chapter she may be recounting a memory or telling a story as an old woman.
Often the two characters become intermingled and sound quite similar, which I personally thought was intent from a storytelling perspective. Making the reader more aware that it is but mere chance which one of them lives through certain trauma, especially if you live in a country that is in constant conflict that pits neighbour, friends and family against each other.
The author creates a scenario of granddaughter and grandmother, which is an homage to the grandmothers she never knew and wished she had, and inserts the story with an atmosphere of nostalgia. Now that might seem like a bizarre thing to say given the brutal details of violence, oppression, grief, betrayal and anger, but it's there you can feel it. The lyrical prose lends itself to exactly that sense of longing, the visceral connection to country of birth and ancestors, and ultimately to one of loss.
It's easy to forget that the country in the midst of war, especially one with a division like that of North and South Vietnam, becomes torn to the point of devastation and destruction. Those who remain have to rebuild and to live with the nightmares, and often make a choice between letting pain and anger eat away at them or trying to regain some semblance of peace.
Buy The Mountains Sing at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by Oneworld Publications; pub date 20 August 2020 - Hardback £14.99. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at One World Publications.
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