Reviews with content warning for Torture - Quando le montagne cantano

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Quando le montagne cantano by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

33 reviews

andreinavhernandez98's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

justinegrace's review against another edition

5.0

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I just finished The Mountains Sing for my bookclub, and I listened on audio but also read the paperback along with it. I’m so glad I listened because hearing the family names, songs, and Vietnamese phrases gave this book an extra layer that I wouldn’t have gotten just reading it on my own and wondering how to pronounce what is written on the page. This story is hard, very hard to read in places but there is so much love and strength throughout the book—and it’s told beautifully. This is the second novel I’ve read written by a poet and the turns of phrases and writing are so lyrical and visual that it makes the reading experience so rich. I also loved the descriptions of food—though hunger is a large part of the suffering the characters go through.
This is historical fiction at its best I think—it’s made me realize how little I know about the Viet Nam war, and now I’ll be doing a deep dive into that. Highly recommend this for those who love multigenerational sagas and strong women characters—though keep in mind this is a book about the ravages of war on a family, so it’s going to be tough, but it’s worth it.

Content Warnings

anniesaez's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

rieviolet's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Despite its difficult subject matter, The Mountains Sing is a book that I didn't want to put down. You are compelled to keep reading to find out what happened in the past and what fate will befall the characters that you've grown attached to.

I really appreciated how the author explored war and its aftermath, both at a wider and at a more personal level (through the story of the Trần family). I think it did well in depicting all the contradictions and nuances in a country's history.
My only minor complaint in terms of the plot is the big revelation in the final chapters; I found it a little bit melodramatic and fortuitous.

I wasn't completely captured by the writing style but, here and there, there were some touching moments elevated by the prose.

Overall, this is a gripping and powerful book that I would encourage everyone to pick up.

Content Warnings

juliabegeman's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

michimiya's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Content Warnings

lightsleeper_heavydreamer's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This was a wonderful family saga and I cried and learned a lot! The things I knew about Vietnamese history I mostly had from museums, this book brought history to life in all its tragedy, cruelty, all its sorrow and grief, all its persistence and kindness and love. At times this story is almost unbeatably sad and I felt so much for the family and everything they had to go through but it also managed to be hopeful throughout. The women here are so strong for their persistence and their unwillingness to give in or to lose their kindness.
Highly recommended the audio book, there's so many Vietnamese proverbs in this and hearing them spoken by a Vietnamese speaker and not just reading them wrongly in my head.

Content Warnings

bessadams's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

b_harrington's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Loved it. So sad, so emotional, but it was also beautifully written and still hopeful/ uplifting.

Content Warnings

now_booking's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Wow. I’ve known about this novel for ages not least of all because I have many friends on Bookstagram who’ve raved about it for years. The truth is they just might have undersold it. This is a truly brilliant, compellingly-told multigenerational family saga that is filled with so much life and tragedy but yet so much hope for healing and reconciliation even in the face of hardship.

First of all, I entered this book not knowing much about Vietnamese history beyond America’s interventionist role in it, the dispute in America around their own involvement, and the resultant mess left behind. To my knowledge, contemporary Vietnam is a gorgeous place that tourists visit and that is on my bucket list to go to. Yet outside of this perspective, I’d never really experienced Vietnam from its own perspective as the subject of its own story rather than through a Western lens. Knowing my own family’s experience of war and occupation in my own country, I know the story is never simple and not everyone will agree with this author’s approach to telling this story or perspectives on historical events as reflected through Huong and her grandmother, Diêu Lan. That said, from my perspective as an international reader, I think the author tells an eminently and universally human story where if we acknowledge the commonality of of our humanity, we will understand that there are no real winners in war.

Diêu Lan is clearly the star of this book even if Huang’s voice remains strong throughout. Sometimes with books about characters that are resilient in the face of incredible trauma and hardship, the inspiration they provide as strong characters can simultaneously feel a little dismissive of the magnitude and impact of the suffering of others- sort of like “if Diêu Lan can move on and keep going, why can’t you? If she can forgive, something must be wrong with you that you can’t.” I think this book approaches this sensibly. Diêu Lan has Pollyanna ways, but she also feels deeply her grief and processes it through her faith. And through that faith, she’s also able to accept people (her children, for example) at different stages of grief and anger and PTSD without judgement and without insisting on her own approach or perspective. I loved how pragmatic she was but also how loving and how emotional. For me, her story was a coming of age story that revealed a lot about how much her family and the way she was raised set her up to face some of the challenges she did in her life. Huang’s story was a parallel coming of age story but more reflective of our journey as readers being novices in Vietnamese history or in Diêu Lan’s life and maturing as we read to a state of of not quite full adulthood, greater understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives and experiences that can be true and the commonality of suffering of everyday people in a war.

The language in this book was absolutely gorgeous, the use of proverbs and stories and viewing the world through a rich lens of culture and traditions, lent authenticity to the history we were reading. This was absolutely tragic but it never felt like grief porn, your heart was broken but in Diêu Lan’s resilience, it was healed again. Even in difficult moments, I was drawn to this and could hardly put it down. This is absolutely my favourite read so far this year and a new all time fave that will stick with me for a long time. I can’t recommend this enough.

Content Warnings

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