Review: The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

“If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.” (p. 19)

In The Mountains Sing, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai weaves a story about 20th-century Việt Nam spanning four generations—from the Japanese occupation and the Great Hunger in the 1930s and 40s to the brutal Land Reform, and the Việt Nam war and its aftermath in the 1980s. The chapters alternate between two main characters the grandmother and granddaughter, as one looks back at the past and the sacrifices she has had to make to keep her family alive, and the other looks towards the future, and the hope of a life without hostility. 

Hương is a teenager living with her young grandmother, Diệu Lan, during the early 1970s. Her parents, as well as her aunts and uncles, have set off to the Hồ Chí Minh trail to join the war efforts and haven’t been back for several years. As the two women seek refuge from bombs and then rebuild their life in Hà Nội, Diệu Lan tells her granddaughter her story, how she went from a being young woman in a prosperous farming family, to trying desperately to be reunited with her children who are scattered all over the war-torn country.  Diệu Lan is a tenacious woman who proves time and time again to be a survivor as she rebuilds her life countless times with resourcefulness and self-reliance, always fleeing conflict. She protects her family fiercely, even when that means the possibility of leaving her children behind. Even in the middle of the war, her priority is Hương’s education: she gifts her illegal American literature and becomes a black-market trader to make money. 

Hương is a smart and curious girl coming of age in a time full of trials and tribulations. She is torn between the love and sorrow of missing her parents and the rage and incomprehension she feels at the war and what it has done to her family.

Over the years Hương and Diệu Lan are reunited with some of their family members, yet the reunion is troubled by scars that the war has left that run very deep. “Would the ghosts of war ever release us from their grip?” (p. 276) Hương asks herself. The divided family mirrors the divided country, at war with itself.

War stories are usually told by men, but through Diệu Lan and Hương’s points of view, we see how the conflicts have seeped into the very fabric of society. I must admit that my knowledge of the history of Việt Nam was mostly limited to what I had learned from American films about the war, where women are scarce, or if present, they are exoticized and victimized. Nguyễn reclaims the agency of women in this story with characters that defy the stereotype. 

This is Nguyễn’s first novel in English, as she usually writes poetry in her native Vietnamese. This is unsurprising as there is a rhythm and a lyricism to the narration. The novel is peppered with Vietnamese words, phrases, and proverbs, which although translated, I regretted not being able to hear as they would sound in Vietnamese. 

I had the opportunity of attending a discussion with the author during a Feminist Book Club Paris meeting. Nguyễn related how she had based this story on the real lives of many Vietnamese women she had met. She had lost her own grandmother to the Great Hunger, and Diệu Lan was an homage to the woman she could have become. The author also explained that she had decided to publish the novel in English because the story would be censured in her home country where the communist government still controls the narrative. In the fictional 1970s, Diệu Lan mentions this censorship:

“A part of our country’s history has been erased, together with the lives of countless people. We’re forbidden to talk about events that relate to past mistakes or the wrongdoing of those in power, for they give themselves the right to rewrite history. But you’re old enough to know that history will write itself on people’s memories, and as long as those memories live on, we can have faith that we can do better.” (p. 166).

This, perhaps, is at the heart of Nguyễn’s intentions for this powerful novel.

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