When I came across this novel online, I was glad to find a highly rated historical fiction book set in a book outside the US or Europe. The story is told from two female perspectives and time periods, during the Land Reform and the Việt Nam War. Though the narrative came across as authentic, the alternating time periods and POVs between different chapters was jarring. I also noticed the author reviewed her own book. Sorry, but I think that is bad form for any author to give their own work a five star rating.

My final rating is 3.5 stars, rounded up to four. Overall it was a well-written novel but had some issues. It is also incredibly depressing, so if you aren't in the mood for that type of story, I'd suggest reading it at a later date. ( )

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Vietnam

This is a dual timeline historical fiction story set in Northern Vietnam by Vietnamese author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. It is a broad sweeping saga following the joys and sorrows of the Trần family from the 1930s to 1980s. Diệu Lan, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the 1953–1956 Land Reform in which the communist Việt Minh government incited the peasants to revolt against the landowners and strip them of their possessions. Diệu Lan survives the French occupation, the Japanese invasion of 1945, the Great Hunger, the Land Reform and the First Indochina war (1946–1954) between the Việt Minh and the French. Her granddaughter, Hương, faces heartache as her parents and uncles go off to fight in the Việt Nam War, none of them returning untouched by the tragedy.

This is an important, insightful book which creates a sense of Vietnam, its people, culture and history. My only complaint, which other readers have also expressed, was that the two narrator voices of Hương and her grandmother were hard to distinguish. I would like to read more of this author’s works. 4.5 stars ( )

Fantastic ( )

This gorgeous, and sometimes brutal, multi-generational Trần family saga spans more than half a century of Vietnamese history, beginning in the French colonial period in the late 1930s through to the present day, narrated by Hương, who was born in 1960, and her grandmother, the family’s matriarch, Diệu Lan, born in 1920. It’s a harrowing tale of murder, occupation, and economic changes, met by the family’s resilience, intelligence, self-reliance, kindness, and fierce independence. The title, Mountains Sing, was taken for the Vietnamese word for a hand-carved bird made by Hương’s father, lost to the war. The horrors Diệu Lan endured or witnessed – like the beheading of her father, separation from her children, the loss of the family fortune repeatedly, through private, government, and military action, and not hearing about the fate of her sons for years – was enough to defeat an ordinary person, but despite all of the loss and violence depicted in the novel, the story is told with grace and compassion, even for those whose actions harmed them most. The story captures the anguish of ordinary farmers who became pawns and victims of the power struggles that had nothing to do with them, and their point of view during the brutal Japanese occupation during World War II, as well as the war we refer to as the Vietnam, and the fallout from the carpet bombing and spraying of Agent Orange. I was so interested to read this perspective from ordinary (i.e., not Communist officials) citizens about the American involvement in Vietnam.

This story will stay with me for a long time, not just for its complex subject matter but also because of its lyrical writing. Through the voice of Hương, the author makes this observation: "I had resented America, too. But by reading their books, I saw the other side of them—their humanity. Somehow I was sure that if people were willing to read each other, and see the light of other cultures, there would be no war on earth." And this is exactly why the book bans going on in American are so antithetical to moral living: one can only brutalize a people if they are not exposed to their humanity, and this is exactly why dictators and fascist regimes destroy books and culture. ( )

A family saga of the generations that lived through the tumultuous 20th century in Vietnam, The Mountains Sing tells a story that would be true for many families in Vietnam. Moving backwards and forwards in time, the fractured chronology ranges from French colonialism at the turn of the century, through the rise of the Communist government in the north, to the advent of the civil war that we call the Vietnam War and they call the American War, and finally the reunification of the country under Communism after the US defeat in 1975.

The Tran family were landholders in the north when the Communists took power and engineered 'Land Reform' in a program whose excesses are reminiscent of those in China under Mao. Resentful villagers turned on landholders with violence in order to meet quotas set by the government and Dieu Lan, born in 1920, has to flee with her six children and nothing but the clothes on her back.

These six children are the generation that fought in the Indochina War against the French who refused to give up their colonial possession in the postwar era, and then in the civil war, north against south. (With the US interfering in both conflicts as part of the Cold War strategy.) But the story is not told from any military perspective... it is a story of women who use courage and ingenuity to survive.

In the second half of the 20th century Dieu Lan's granddaughter Huong comes of age as the war is ending and the quest to find missing family members comes to its often shattering conclusion.

It is rare to come across novels written by authors who actually live in Vietnam, and the authenticity of The Mountains Sing is apparent in Que Mai's use of the language and traditions of Vietnam. But unlike another recent novel that I abandoned because I could not make sense of the frequent use of a language I didn't know, Que Mai's skilful bilingualism makes it easy to understand. This is an example selected at random...

'So skillful!' A child's voice flowed toward me, together with the rhythmic tick-tick sound of a featherball being kicked. Ngoc, Minh, and Dat were counting, together: 'Một trăm bảy mươi mốt' One-hundred and seventy-one times! Could someone kick the ball so many times without dropping it? I stood up, bowed to the altar, and went out to the front yard. I saw the children standing in a circle.

Dressed in shorts, Minh was bare-chested, sweat glistening on his skin. He was balancing on one leg, his other leg kicking a featherball. My brother Cong had found the best feathers and pinned them to a rubber base, to make the ball. (p.94)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/23/the-mountains-sing-2020-by-nguyen-phan-que-m... ( )