Banyan Moon

2023

by Thao Thai

Banyan Moon is 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 and buried secrets.

When Ann Tran gets the call that her beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. Ann has built a seemingly perfect life. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away 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, Hu'o'ng. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, 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. 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 her family.

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.

Reviews

Review by ivette

Lo acabé porque soy de las que tiene que acabar libros, y porque no es un mal libro. De hecho, creo que es una lectura perfecta para verano, con profundidad, emocional, y al mismo tiempo fácil de digerir. Sin embargo, no es tanto mi tipo de ficción. Casi, pero no. ¿Por qué? Creo que tiene que ver con la prosa y la historia en sí misma. Aunque disfruté muchos detalles, como la casa que se vuelve un personaje junto con los árboles que la rodean, creo que no hay tanto que sea particularmente original, al menos no como me gustaría. Pero quizá estoy siendo medio snob y en otro momento hubiera amado este libro.

Likeless so far. Lead the way
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