The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (#27 in 2020)
Thank you to @algonquinbooks for my gifted copy! Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her children during the Land Reform. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that ravaged not just her beloved country, but her family as well. I'm the kind of person who gets hung up on proper pronunciation, and I, admittedly, know nothing when it comes to the Vietnamese language. Back when I read The Chestnut Man, I found myself on YouTube trying to figure out the proper pronunciation of names, so the audio version of The Mountains Sing was clutch. Once I was able to remember names, I was able to seamlessly go back and forth between the audio and the physical book.
From a historical standpoint, I enjoyed learning more about both the Vietnam conflict and war, as this is the first book I've read on the subject. While I've read about the Vietnam War in textbooks, I've never read any literature on the subject, and I didn't know much about the political history of Vietnam prior to the war, either. From a literary standpoint, I loved the alternating perspectives of both granddaughter and grandmother, and it warmed my heart to see just how similar these two women, from two very different time periods, really were. 4.5 stars
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