The Mountains Sing

Finished August 24

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Covering nearly a century, this is a tale of one family, the Tran family, through multiple generations in Vietnam. Told by grandmother Dieu Lan who was born in 1920, and her granddaughter Huong, born in 1960, this story is also a history of Vietnam during the 20th century. Dieu Lan was a farmer, a teacher,  and finally a trader, the last a profession frowned upon by the government, but one that was more lucrative than her former teaching job. 

We see Dieu Lan's story as she relates it to Huong after they've survived the Vietnam War and Huong is struggling to understand her family as they all deal with the traumas they've undergone. 

The first is the time of Great Hunger, when the Tran's and their neighbours are dying due to lack of food. Two neighbours emerge from this time as close supporters from then on, Mrs. Tu, who takes on a role as a sort of honorary grandmother and housekeeper for the family; and Mr. Hai, who helps them find a source of food. Dieu Lan's father treated her as an equal to his song Cong and both her and Cong make good marriages. When she, Cong, and their father were taking a load of potatoes to market, they find themselves attacked by Japanese soldiers who have moved into their area, and her father is killed. 

Cong and Dieu Lan escape, but the event is a blow to the family, and soon after that the Vietnam forces that liberate them from the Japanese occupation engage in an act of Land Reform, and disgruntled peasants turn on all landowners, even those who treated their workers well, and landowners were driven from their homes and land, and, in many cases killed. Dieu Lan loses more family members during this time. 

Dieu Lan must find a way forward with her remaining family members. She had six children: Minh, born in 1938, who may have escaped with his life, but she loses contact with; Ngoc, born in 1940, and became a doctor, who goes on to marry Hoang and is the mother of Huong who also tells a large portion of the story of this book; Dat, born in 1941 and left his girlfriend Nhung to go to war against the Americans; Thuan, born in 1947, who also went to war; Hanh, born in 1948, who found a life in Saigon; and Sang, born in 1954 and who was still an infant as the family fled.

During the war, Huong was with her grandmother in Ha Noi, but they often fled to the nearby mountains during bombing attacks, sometimes for long periods. When they returned to the city, they had to rebuild and hope that the other family members who had left to either fight in the war or support those who were fighting will return home. Some do, but all suffer from trauma of different types. 

The author is a well-regarded poet and the writing here shows her skill with language and storytelling. 

I was totally captured by the story and the family members' stories, wanting to know how each one dealt with their issues and found a way forward. 

A book that was both enlightening and captivating. 

Nowhere Is a Place

Finished February 2 

Nowhere Is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden

This is a book about a journey. There is a journey in a physical sense as the two main characters, Sherry and her mother Dumpling drive from her mother's home to a family reunion several states away. There is a journey into the past as Dumpling tells the story of their family and Sherry enlarges on that story, bringing it to life with new details and depth. And there is a journey of the relationship between these two women, who hadn't been close in a long time, perhaps not since Sherry was a young child, and how the story of the past laid bare the incident that came between them and gave new closeness to them, even more than Dumpling has with her other children.

This story goes back into the 19th century, with Dumpling's great grandmother, a young indigenous girl abducted from her home, separated from her siblings, and sold into slavery. We see how she gradually came to terms with her new reality, and started a family, with many losses along the way. And we follow one of her daughter's who becomes Dumpling's grandmother and starts again after the Civil War, and how her family also has loss and trouble. And then we see how Dumpling also has had to deal with issues outside of her control. And Sherry is the one bringing all these stories to life, as she also drives her mother across the country and along the way visits with a variety of people from her own past, people that helped make her the woman she is today. 

This is a book about telling our stories, even the difficult ones. And how doing that allows us to move forward into happiness and a more hopeful future. 

Golden Age

Finished November 5
Golden Age by Jane Smiley, read by Lorelei King

This is the third book in a trilogy. I read the second one Early Warning a while back. This novel opens in 1987 and takes us up to the present.
The books follow the Langdon family. Here we see twin brothers Michael and Richie, who take very different paths in their lives, separate and come back together, and separate again. Their relationship is very complicated. Their lives involve politics and high finance, fraud and betrayal. Their sister Janet is distant, dealing with her own baggage and finds solace in horses and solitude.
The youngest generation from the family line still on the Iowa farm chooses different paths away. Two of them go into the military, serving in Iraq, and dealing with the effects of that experience. The daughter, Felicity, focuses on the environment and worries about health and sustainability.
I was completely drawn into the character's lives, reacting strongly to the betrayals suffered and the pain felt. This, along with the earlier books, is a story of America over generations, one that is as complex as the lives of the characters. We see their world evolve and priorities change, and we see how they react and how they connect.
A wonderful read.

Early Warning

Finished October 18
Early Warning by Jane Smiley, read by Lorelei King

This book follows the Langdon family from 1953 to the early 1980s. As the book opens, the patriarch of the family, Walter, has died, and the family convenes in Iowa for his funeral. His wife Rosanna remains on the farm, as does one of the sons, Joe, who married Lois, and has a son Jesse, and later a daughter. Frank has made his way to Washinton, D.C. where he becomes a mover and shaker in the corporate world, drawing on some of his experiences as a sniper in World War Two. Frank has married Andy, a woman with her own issues, and had first a daughter and then twin sons, who have a lifelong rivalry. Lilian has been swept off her feet and to the East coast by Arthur, a CIA planner, and they have four children, two boy and two girls. Claire marries thoughtfully, but finds her husband a very controlling man, and it takes her some time to find her own place in the world, after having two sons.
The novel takes us through all the major events of the time period, from Vietnam to anti-war demonstrations, from the Cold War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Watergate, from LSD to Jim Jones. The characters become involved in some ways peripherally and in others directly, and we see tragedy, joy, marriage, divorce, addiction, psychoanalysis, and of course the growth of a new generation of characters. It continues the story started in Some Luck, which I haven't yet read, and a third volume is expected. The characters vary in depth, and we see growth in all the main characters, both in experience as well as age. A very enjoyable book that gives a taste of the times it is set in. A book of America in the mid-to-late twentieth century.