Thank you to HarperAudio/Netgalley for the ALC and Thoughts From a Page, Mariner Books, #partner, for an advanced e-copy of Banyan Moon in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Mariner Books / Harper Audio
Published: June 27, 2023
Summary:
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.
“Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family and survival.”—Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
My thoughts:
I was thrilled when Cindy from the Thoughts of a Page Podcast selected this book for her Patreon group to read early as I had already had my eye on it. I love multigenerational family sagas and knew this was something I would love to read, plus I am always on the lookout for debut authors and that cover just drew me in…isn’t it stunning? I might have to get a hardcopy just to display!
This book follows three generations of women and really looks into just how complicated the relationships between mothers and daughters can be. It moves back and forth from Vietnam to Florida, and not having read many books set in Vietnam, nor set during the Vietnam War, I really appreciated this aspect of the book. I loved how we slowly get to know each of the women, how their histories and secrets slowly unravel so that you come to understand the choices they have made and why things have happened as they did. There is tremendous character growth throughout the novel and I loved seeing this as the book progresses. I didn’t care much for Ann in the beginning of the book, but she definitely grew on me as we learned more about her.
I loved the structure of the book. The story alternates between the three women, however we are hearing from Minh, the matriarch of the family, in the afterlife because she has just passed away as the story has started. This was a bit jarring at first and definitely took some getting used to, but really didn’t seem too crazy when put together with the overall story.
I was completely engrossed with this story and am in awe that this is a debut novel. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what comes next from this talented author!
Audio thoughts:
The audiobook for this was phenomenal. I loved that there were three narrators, for each of the three women, and they all did such a fantastic job bringing this story to life. The narrators, Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho, Elyse Dinh, really were able to bring their A-game to their performances. Their pacing and intonation was spot on and I felt that they each infused just the right amount of tension and emotion into their voices as needed.
