Cecile Pin

4.5⭐️(rounded up)

“Knowledge allows remembering, and remembering is honoring.”

In an effort to flee post-war –Vietnam in search of a new life, a family decides to flee to the United States, where they have family waiting for them. Sixteen-year-old Anh, ten-year-old Thanh and Minh thirteen at the time, are the first to embark on this perilous journey, with their parents and remaining siblings to follow. In a tragic turn of events, their parents and younger siblings do not survive the show more first leg of the journey. Anh and her brothers are rejected for asylum in the United States and eventually are admitted into the United Kingdom – a journey that takes two years and stretches at refugee camps in Hong Kong and finally in the UK, where they await resettlement. We go on to follow Anh, now responsible for her younger brothers as she and her siblings process their losses, cope with the trauma they have witnessed and endured and strive to adjust to life in their adopted country.

The narrative is presented to us in three threads. The first is the story of Anh and her two siblings, presented in the third person narrative format predominantly from Anh’s perspective that follows their story from 1978 to the present day. The second thread is the first-person narrative of Dao, one of their younger brothers who did not survive the journey along with their parents, floating in the afterlife and keeping watch over his three surviving siblings. The third thread is that of a writer (whose identity is revealed later on in the narrative) in the present day who is drafting a story based on Anh’s experiences, documenting her research. The threads do come across as a tad disjointed and it took a while to get used to the abrupt change in narrative especially when the writer’s thread is presented to us.

“I am trying to carve out a story between the macabre and the fairy tale, so that a glimmer of truth can appear.”

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin is a beautifully written, well-researched, insightful and thought-provoking story. The story touches upon themes of immigration, the refugee crisis, grief, loss, survivor's guilt, generational trauma and healing. While the story sheds a light on the perilous journey of Vietnamese boat refugees and refugees and immigrants all around the world who are compelled to embark on dangerous journeys seeking sanctuary, the author also sheds a light on generational trauma and how grief casts a shadow on the lives of those who are both, directly and indirectly, affected by a loss. I can’t help pondering over the significance of the title of this novel. The novel references Operation Wandering Soul - a psychological warfare campaign exercised by US troops during the Vietnam War that revolved around the Vietnamese belief that their dead must be given a proper burial in their hometown, failing which their souls would aimlessly wander the earth. We also meet a wandering soul, Dao, Anh’s younger sibling. The term "wandering souls" also signifies the sense of displacement and loss that refugees struggle with in their search for a sense of home and belongingness in their adopted country. The author references several horrific real events such as the rape and torture of Vietnamese refugees by Thai fishermen on the Thai island of Koh Kra in 1979 and the Essex Lorry Deaths of 2019 while also giving us a glimpse into the immigration policies and politics in the UK during that period. Overall, this is an incredibly moving and impactful read and a stunning debut. I can’t wait to read more from this talented new author.

I paired my reading with excellent audio narration by Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook and Ainsleigh Barber that brought these characters and this story to life.

“We fill in the gaps. We find stories in every little moment and gather them up readily. We imagine that the unknown isn’t the worst scenario and we try to make sense of the senseless. We look for the silver linings and the whys and what- ifs and what- should- have- beens. We try to solve the puzzle, pieces scattered through time and space and the deepest corners of our memories. And what better way is there of doing that, what better way is there of processing our past, than by rewriting it?”

Connect with me!

Instagram
My Blog
The StoryGraph show less

I'm old enough to remember the humanitarian crisis of the Vietnamese boat people fleeing their country after the Vietnam war. The news covered the overcrowded small boats and the large numbers that capsized at sea. I don't remember news about the other terrible things that happened, such as piracy and disease, that caused so many other deaths among them.

Wandering Souls fills in those gaps in a way that also subtly explores what it means to be a refugee to a country with a different culture show more and language and does so in a way that creates an emotional response in the reader beyond bare, dry facts. While telling the story, the author inserts other POVs, bits of research, and the researcher's own first personal emotional response, without revealing the identity of the researcher until the end. This is one of the best books I have read that illustrates the journey of refugees and the generational trauma that can haunt many of them. show less

This is a little book about big life questions. It is just slightly longer than a novella, and yet the central character is extremely well drawn, and it tells the scope of his life from childhood to middle age. It's a literary novel that is science fiction adjacent, being about an astronaut who is selected by a private space company to travel to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, in search of signs of life. This choice seems to be the fulfillment of the total sum of his life's path, but he leaves show more behind a wife and a young son, and the trip is ten years long.

I loved this novel. Cecile Pin is a brilliant writer, and it takes no time at all to get into this book. The book goes back and forth in time using a third person observer, and the Commander's personal logs. It is a bittersweet examination of a character, and, I think, perhaps, on another level, a commentary on the egomaniacal form of private space travel that has arisen in the past several years.

My only quibble with the ARC that I was provided was that the publisher chose an old fashioned typeface from a manual typewriter in which to render the Commander's personal logs aboard the spacecraft. This was such an anachronistic style choice, that I kept searching for a reason or meaning that apparently wasn't there. Additionally, the font was so realistic that it left off pieces of letters and was a lighter, smaller, font, making it difficult to read. I found that to be an irritating distraction that I hope will be corrected in the final published version. show less

Ruthlessness. Ollie had that trait. The ability to go forward, no matter the cost.

I was enchanted by the beginning of the novel, Ollie sharing his childhood, how he met the strange girl Philly in their eighth summer in 1995. The memories coming to him as “flashing images, as if looking through a View-Master at glimpses of my childhood.” Philly was spending the summer at her aunt’s house in a small village in England, exploring the garden and fields in search of the elusive cicadas that show more she swore she could hear underground. Ollie was a loner and was bewitched by Philly.

It is a beautiful rendition of recollected childhood, how things look so big and life so full of mystery. The children spent all their time together until fall when Ollie learns that Philly must return to her mother. Their planned reunion was squashed when Philly’s aunt sold her property.

Years pass. Ollie goes to uni where he runs into Philly again. He joins the submarine core, becomes an astronaut, his career the center of his life. Even when he and Philly become involved and marry, his career controls their lives. And when Ollie is asked to join a ten year mission to go to Europa–one of Jupiter’s moons–Philly gives him an ultimatum. He can choose life, his wife and son, his mother fighting cancer, or his career.

Ollie’s boyhood bedroom was papered with stars and planets. He studied mechanical engineering because his father told him that engineers were builders of dreams. He accepted the biggest challenges, believing he was doing work that would benefit all humanity.

The book alternates between Ollie’s ship log, his life on board the space craft as part of a crew of four, and his remembering his past.

Ollie believed his choices would give his life meaning and a greater purpose. Or was he merely on a quest for fame? Philly had hoped that his personal life would hold enough meaning in itself. Love. Fatherhood. Being there for aging parents.

It is a choice we all make. Career, or stay at home mother/father. A job that touches lives for mediocre renumeration or a job with a big salary? Connection or lone wolf exploration? Each choice has its gains or losses.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers show less