This book is very strange and not to my taste. It was soooky, eerie and weird.
Not the book for me

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Back in 2014, I reviewed Kupersmith’s debut collection, The Frangipani Hotel, for BookBrowse. I was held rapt by its ghostly stories of Vietnam, so I was delighted to hear that she had written a debut novel, and it was one of my few correct predictions for the Women’s Prize nominees. The main action takes place between when Winnie – half white and half Vietnamese – arrives in Saigon to teach English in 2010, and when she disappears from the house she shared with her boyfriend of three months, Long, in March 2011. But the timeline darts about to tell a much more expansive story, starting with the Japanese invasion of Vietnam in the 1940s. Each date is given as the number of months or years before or after Winnie’s disappearance.

Winnie starts off living with a great-aunt and cousins, and meets a family friend, Dr. Sang, who’s been experimenting on a hallucinogenic drug made from cobra venom. Long and his brother, Tan, a policeman, were childhood friends with a fearless young woman named Binh – now a vengeful ghost haunting them both. Meanwhile, the Saigon Spirit Eradication Company, led by the Fortune Teller, is called upon to eradicate a ghost – which from time to time seems to inhabit a small dog – from a snake-infested highland estate. These strands are bound to meet, and smoke and snakes wind their way through them all.

I enjoyed Kupersmith’s energetic writing, which reminded me by turns of Nicola Barker, Ned Beauman, Elaine Castillo and Naoise Dolan, and the glimpses of Cambodia and Vietnam we get through meals and motorbike rides. What happens with Belly the dog towards the end is fantastic. But the chronology feels needlessly complex, with the flashbacks to colonial history and even to Binh’s story not adding enough to the narrative. While I would have liked to see Kupersmith make the Women's Prize shortlist, I can recommend her short stories that bit more highly. (3.5 stars)

I was genuinely blown away by this book. I didn't expect it to be quite so bizarre and gruesome in parts, and even though it was a little confusing in bits, I really was pulled through the story in a state of fascination and apprehension.

I loved how each strand of the story was woven together, and the Vietnamese mythology was new to me, so it felt like a strange, unique experience. I liked some characters more than others, but some you were supposed to dislike, and the author has a visceral way of describing their thoughts and experiences.

I would definitely read more by this author, and more stories featuring Vietnamese magic or mythology. This is such a strange, twisting book - certainly warnings for anyone afraid of snakes or sensitive to more graphic content, but otherwise I really would recommend it.

Thank you for my earc of this book!
A really interesting premise that I think was executed well in the most part. At times a little disconnected which pulled me out of the story but overall done well. Many a snake so beware if you’ve a phobia.

To say that the author has a phobia of snakes there are far too many in this book. Why would you pepper your book with something you have a phobia of? I too have a phobia and I could not read very far into this book because of the not knowing if a drawing of one is going to be on the next page. I dreaded turning a page and for that I could not continue.

Took a while to get into but totally worth the effort. Snake-heavy, so watch out if you’re phobic. Interweaving histories, folklore, feminism… wonderful!

Unfortunately this book was not for me. Other readers may enjoy it more, but I could not get into it and ultimately did not finish it.

this ended up being nothing like i expected, in a good way!!! set in vietnam, it follows a string of stories, focusing mainly on an american-vietnamese girl who has moved to vietnam to teach english. i really loved the way it was written, wrapping me up in a culture i don't know all that well but could visualise

i loved the magical realism elements to it and although i got lost a lil towards the end i liked the way everything wrapped up

would recommend!!

Allow me to introduce you to my favorite book of the year.. “Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.”

Each piece starts the same, with a perfectly normal story about normal things that then, without you even realizing it, morph into something as discomfiting as ground that swallows you up, air that dissolves men into particles, or giant black eels that eat people.

It’s impossible to understand how the author is setting up the big gut-punch, but then BAM it happens and leaves you with that fulfilled feeling of wow I just read something that is truly one of a kind. After. Every. Chapter.

This book should have been perfect for me, but unfortunately there were some things lacking from it. The fantasy was both there and not, the mystery was solved quite early on through logic, and I just felt it could have been so much better with some tweaks.

What I would add is that if, like me, you're visually impaired in any way, I would suggest reading it via audiobook to help with words that I struggled to pronounce.

Centred around the disappearance of 22-year-old Winnie, a Vietnamese American who arrives in Saigon in 2010 to teach English and reconnect with her heritage. We look at her life immediately before her disappearance The story moves back and forward in time linking events with her disappearance There were many characters and many events. which became confusing at times. I wanted so much to enjoy this book but found it did not grip me enough to persevere However, Kupersmith is a superb writer and I will actively seek out her next book.

This book was weird. No other way to describe it. Sadly for me, not weird in a way that i would love.
The cover is stunning and the premise was fantastic - although the world building was full of flavours, I felt it lacked something in the way the characters moved in the world. There was something about the pacing that was awfully slow, with microdetails about the world which for me derailed from the story. This has lead me not to enjoy this book.

Not a bad book, but i am not it's reader.

Vietnamese folklore, monsters, body-hopping ghosts and a good dose of women taking revenge? Sign me up.

It's pretty impossible to describe this book in any detail, as it's a pretty wild ride that asks the reader to suspend disbelief and just climb aboard. It's well-written and brilliantly paced, with a wry, dry humour that still doesn't quite take the edge off some of the really spooky parts. The horror is visceral and unnerving, and the tone veers from darkly comedic to just plain dark. I saw the publisher's blurb described it as a 'fever dream of a novel', and I think that's pretty apt. Would love to see this adapted for film or TV one day, as I think visually it would be incredible.

I was swept up at the beginning into an intriguing story of an American woman missing in Vietnam. The story shifts between two timelines - one in the 1940s the other in 2011. I was hoping to be entranced by vivid descriptions of the countryside, the people and culture but the chapters became tangled up in minutiae detail irrelevant to the storyline and many character introductions left half understood, As the chapters twisted and turned from one century to the other it became more and more of a horror story with some gruesome details which in my mind did not add to the story.
A slow burner but the many characters and locations had some connections if you can keep track of them.

Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC

Such an intriguing book! The mystery kept me reading and I loved not only the setting but its undersetting of the postcolonial Vietnam. Really enjoyed its dual narrative too!

To be honest, I am not completely sure what Ive just read. It was super weird (which is a good thing cause it kept me invested), I was trying to connect the dots regarding the characters and mostly made it. The ending left me a bit puzzled though. The writing is great, the idea as well, it has bits of ''The Beach'' vibes, but its too long and I am sure I would enjoy it more if it was shorter.

Set in Vietnam, this is a strange and unsettling story of revenge on many layers. I felt immersed in the history of Vietnam and the setting of all the seedy sides of the city with the constant heat. The mystical element of the story creeps in so subtly that you are drawn in to believing that all this. could happen.
This is a beautifully written story.

This huge, sweeping, dizzying debut defies categorisation and will leave your head spinning in the best possible way. A young American woman, Winnie, has gone missing in Vietnam, and her sort-of-boyfriend Long begins increasingly frantic attempts to find her, gradually realising the seriousness of the situation – but we’re then immediately whisked up to the country’s Highlands, eighteen years earlier, to watch a funeral procession in a rural town. The time-travelling continues in beautifully-crafted vignettes like interlocking rooms, each one leading to another in an unexpected way, haunted by ghosts which become increasingly familiar as the connections between characters unfold. It is a sensorial fever dream of a book that’ll frequently make you stop, blink, reread sentences and remain profoundly unsettled – not just by the terrifying magical realism that Kupersmith deftly uses when you least expect it – but by the country’s violent colonial history and decades of cruel wrongdoing that leaves her ghosts bloodthirsty for revenge, lying silently in wait for her characters, hidden just beneath the surface of the story.

This was a very weird book, full of two headed snakes, smoke turning to humans and what not.
TW : sexual assault

The basic plot is this -
3 women, across 3 different generations, disappear under suspicious circumstances. No one knows how or why.
There are multiple timelines in this book. But in current time, we have ghosts of these disappeared women possessing people to right the wrongs done to them when they were alive.

I loved this idea of spirits taking revenge against people who caused them harm. This was author's way to give empowerment to female characters.

There was a line in the book -
Men think that they are entitled to everything they want, especially if it is related to a woman's body.

I 100% agree with this and I loved this author for boldly highlighting this!

The author's interview is given in the beginning. That created a good base for the book. Many things in the story became easy to understand because of this.

But there were things I did not like in this-
The multiple timelines stories started and stopped abruptly. There were too many characters and it became confusing as to how things were related. I could only figure it out when I was 70% in the book.

There are heavy implications (nothing explicit) to some truly disgusting instances of sexual violence. It was horrible.

Some parts dragged unnecessarily and I felt some things were not tied up in the end properly.

Still I feel this was an important, bold book.

Thank you netgalley and oneworldpublications for the e-arc. The above words reflect my honest opinion.