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A Novel
by Thao Thai
Book Reviewed by:A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories.
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she's last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.
Back in Florida, Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann's childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.
Running parallel to this is Minh's story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House's attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life—and beyond.
Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.
Chapter 1
1998
At first, there was no sign of the red tide, except for a tightness in their throats as they picked their way through dune grass that bristled against their legs. Three shades of brown, three sets of stalks, wild as the vegetation prowling along the coast. Ann, seven years old and dying to run down to the surf, reached down to scratch her ankle, but her mother, Hương, pulled her up, in a silent hurry, though there was no appointment to make, no work to rush to that day. A rare day of repose for the Tran women, and one that each measured with her own internal expectation, none of which overlapped. The morning was still, if portentous.
"You're so slow, con," Hương said. "Little lost turtle."
It was hard to tell if she was teasing. Hương's voice shouldered an edge, something related to sarcasm, though Ann will never be able to pinpoint exactly what, even years later when she is an adult.
Ann peered up at her mother until she saw the ...
What was the last book you bought, where did you buy it (online, indie bookstore) and how soon will you read it?
My wife and I saw a signed copy of Banyan Moon by Thao Thai in our local bookstore in Plymouth, Book Love, so we decided to buy it! Will probably read it soon. I also recently bought the James ebook online and...
-nick
What are some books you loved reading in 2024?
Here are some of the books I read this year and loved: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating - Elisabeth Tova Bailey Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin Banyan Moon - Thao Thai A Walk in the Park - Kevin Fedarko Testimony - Anita Shreve The House is on Fire - Rachel Beanland Frozen Ri...
-Roberta_Winchester
I loved each character and the way Thao Thai develops them literally and metaphorically. I really liked the way she goes back and forth from each, weaving an intense story of all the emotions humans deal with in life: love, hate, fear and hope. She makes the characters and settings come alive and totally engages the reader (Candace F). The mother-daughter relationships are so powerful, so real—sometimes so beautifully woven and other times so devastatingly fragile—that the book's power was a vital force (Theresa P). Banyan Moon is one of the most poignant, heartwarming books I have read in quite a while (Sheila S)...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Carolyn Huynh, author of The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Tender, gripping and heartbreaking. A haunting page turner that reexamines lineage, motherhood, and what it means to be a survivor—in every definition of the word. A welcome debut from a stunning voice who will forever impact the Vietnamese American canon. Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles
A beautifully written, page-turning novel that explores the traumatic legacy of war, the complexity of cultural assimilation, and the intimacy of family conflict with fierce grace and psychological acuity. Banyan Moon is a celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read. E.M. Tran, author of Daughters of the New Year
Thao Thai pierces the veil between the living and the dead in this haunted and beautifully rendered debut. This is a story about mothers and daughters, the chasm where misunderstandings accrue, and enduring tenderness despite the little hurts we may inflict on our loved ones. Most affectingly, Thai gives us characters who mourn lost origins, but who still get to decide what home looks like. A spellbinding and intricately layered story, Banyan Moon celebrates Vietnamese women. Meng Jin, author of Little Gods and Self-Portrait with Ghost
Banyan Moon is an intricately woven story of three generations of women, surviving and living each in their own way. This novel has everything you want: desire, betrayal, grit, tenderness, pride, love, and--most deliciously, most brazenly--the dirty secrets and sacred secrets we make and keep to protect what we hold dear. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family and survival. Thao Thai is a major talent whose exciting, impressive, and poetic prose will grow into you, like a strong and lush banyan tree deeply rooted in the rich Vietnamese literary heritage. Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
Thao Thai captures the complexities of familial love with an unflinching, yet gorgeously lyric, eye. Banyan Moon is an ambitious and masterful debut! Tracey Lien, internationally bestselling author of All That's Left Unsaid
Banyan Moon offers an honest and aching exploration of the gulf between generations—how we misunderstand those we love the most, the unintentional hurt we cause them, how we struggle to find the language to connect. But it's also a novel of hope, a story of forgiveness, a reminder that even though we can never fully know the people closest to us, it is worth the try.
In Banyan Moon, author Thao Thai interweaves references to a Vietnamese folktale about a "man in the moon." In the story, a woodcutter called Chú Cuội is walking through the jungle one day when he sees a trio of tiger cubs. He approaches, thinking he might be able to catch one and sell it, then use the money to buy an ox. He manages to grab one of the cubs and begins his trek out of the jungle, when he suddenly hears the ferocious roar of the cubs' mother behind him. Chú Cuội scampers up a tree, dropping the tiger cub in the process. The cub suffers an injury to the head in the fall, and Chú Cuội watches in amazement as the mother tiger removes leaves from a banyan tree, chews them and applies them to the ...
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