March 2020 – a day in the (reading) life

The Mountains Sing

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing. I have to admit my stop was actually scheduled for Tuesday, March 17, but the world has a way of taking over sometimes. Tuesday was the first day that our entire office began working from home due to that nasty ol’ COVID-19, and things were a little chaotic. I just flat forgot about the blog tour until today, but this is a fine book that deserves many kudos, so better late than never I say! Kick back and let me bend your ear about this one.

Tiny, beautiful Viet Nam. A country seemingly forever at war, and a watershed moment in the course of our own history. In Vietnamese mountains and jungles, so many fought and died. We asked why, did not buy the answers, and we changed. In a worldwide dispersal, countless Vietnamese refugees left their country for ours and others, and we changed. Never the same, but, you see, we didn’t know Viet Nam then, and we don’t know it now. Many of us don’t, anyway. Most of us, perhaps. For anyone who remembers our involvement in Viet Nam, anyone who wants to more fully understand that dark, unsettling time, The Mountains Sing is a must. For everyone who simply wants to read an extraordinary book, what can I say except “this one”. Here it is.

Vietnamese native Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s novel reverses our perspective as we view her struggling country through Vietnamese eyes, those of the Tran family and, in particular, the family matriarch Dieu Lan and her granddaughter, twelve-year-old Huong. Huong’s father is away at war and no one knows if he is alive or dead. When her mother, a doctor, goes south to find him, she leaves Huong with her grandmother, a strong, strong woman who is a teacher and, in her youth, a beauty, a “jade leaf on a branch of gold”. According to Vietnamese tradition, she calls Huong by a nickname, Guava, to guard her from evil spirits. They lose their home to American bombs, depend on the kindness of their countrymen and experience their cruelty as well. Run, hide, take shelter, survive. Through it all, Dieu Lan steadies and supports Huong with stories of her own life, their family and their homeland, its history and its people, and it is in this way that we, as readers, experience life through four generations in this war-torn country. Beauty and brutality. Guilt and innocence. Pain and hope. Huong finds comfort and strength in her grandmother’s stories and Vietnamese proverbs, as do we. “Intact leaves safeguard ripped leaves.” “One bite when starving equals one bundle when full.” We lose ourselves in Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s lyrical prose, and we learn.

Reading such a book as this reminds me that perhaps American readers are not as cognizant of international authors as we could be, of the value and insight they bring to our world view. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is also an award-winning poet, and it shows in her amazing book, so Asian in character yet so wondrously written in English by this non-native speaker. Lovely. And we learn. We learn and re-learn what we already knew, what we instinctively know – surely we do. That war is hell for both “sides”, that family is strength and love, that people are only people after all. Let The Mountains Sing remind you just how good a book can be and why we love them so. Explore international authors beginning here. Read this one.

Thanks so much to Kelly Doyle at Algonquin Books for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for The Mountains Sing. And even bigger thanks to Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai for creating this masterpiece for us all to savor and enjoy. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

It’s OK to dangle your foot over the edge of the bed. Really. There are no monsters underneath. Really. Truly. It’s OK to read Stephen King or even Edgar A. Poe just before you turn out the lights. Sweet dreams. But, if you read Richard Preston’s most recent non-fiction entry about the Ebola virus, Crisis in the Red Zone…….? YOU’LL NEVER SLEEP ANOTHER WINK IN YOUR LIFE! My friends, as we’re finding out with the current Coronavirus pandemic, we are not prepared. Preston’s newest title was released in July of last year, months before the current outbreak, so it’s even more relevant now that the world finds itself in this new, major viral predicament.

Ebola? A possibility we know about. What we don’t know is what we don’t know. What I do know is that this good book will keep your lights on for hours, so you wouldn’t be sleeping anyway. Remember Preston’s equally fascinating The Hot Zone? Chapter and verse on the African Ebola outbreak of the 1970’s. Crisis in the Red Zone, his latest, gives a brief and interesting recap of that epidemic and then takes us to 2014. Remember? Another horrifying outbreak in West Africa that modern medicine couldn’t quell, an outbreak that suddenly had us all sweating the possibilities. Global travel. Permeable borders. Airplanes and cruise ships. Possibilities that we’re all sweating again today with coronavirus. Ebola made it to the US that time. It surely did. And so has coronavirus.

But there was a vaccine in 2014, right? Yes, experimental ones, but for the most promising one there was only one existing test on primates and none on humans. The story of the vaccines alone is a fascinating one, particularly so in that most of the development was entrepreneurial. But it’s perfected now, right? Well, you’d think. And imagine the medical, ethical and personal quandary, the agony, of a doctor presented with enough of this untried vaccine for one patient – when you have a quarantine compound with hundreds of sick and dying. It happened. The man forced to make that call exists.

There was no cure. In Africa, the focus had to be on controlling transmission, and you’ll be introduced to the seemingly cruel, but ultimately effective, Ancient Rule. You’ll learn that Ebola is a wet virus that is transmitted only through direct contact with bodily fluids. OK, that’s good to know, but you’ll be asked to think about the possibility of a dry, or airborne, virus that is as deadly as Ebola. Is the coronavirus that virus? Given a 3.4% coronavirus mortality rate vs. Ebola’s 90% death knell, probably not. But there’s still every reason in the world to be worried. Feeling a little feverish? Thank you, Mr. Preston, for another important book that, as always, is also a great, timely read.

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Random House Publishing Group – Random House via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank the publisher, the author and NetGalley for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.