Wandering Souls is about three siblings leaving Vietnam after the war. Anh, Minh and Thanh travel by boat to Hong Kong first and expect their parents and other siblings to shortly follow them. However, tragedy strikes and the rest of their family doesn't make it, leaving the three siblings to push on and follow the path their parents intended for them. They find themselves eventually resettled in England and their lives start to branch out from there as they try to find their place and purpose, but can't forget their past or the difficult experiences they've had. The book is told from many viewpoints, mostly Anh's as the siblings struggle to move on, but also their sibling Dao, who died on the crossing to Hong Kong and is the voice of the family's afterlife. At first there is an unknown narrator, which is a bit confusing, but it comes together by the end of the book when it's revealed the narrator is Anh's daughter Jane, as she takes on the task to understand her family's history and the history of Vietnamese refugees. Overall, a short but impactful book that looks at what it means to survive and push forward, even after significant loss and generational trauma.

1978, after the fall of Saigon - siblings Anh, Minh and Thanh are leaving Vietnam to Hong Kong, traveling ahead on a separate boat while the rest of the family will soon follow. Little do they know that this would be their last time reunited.

From Vietnam war to journey as refugees to voices from the lost family, this is a story about a Vietnamese family in the pursuit for a better future. Beyond the hardships from crossing countries, the siblings have new beginnings. What comes with a fresh start is the challenging process of assimilation as well.
Jumping into the unknown, when nothing is to blame and everything is to blame, one feel with the characters their despair but also resilience. Anh, being the eldest of the family, is burdened with being responsible for her brothers. Then one follows the siblings' fate, one see them and hear them.

Written in multiple perspectives and jumping between different timelines, their story represents only a small fraction of the countless refugees who yearn for reckoning and peace. Their lives are given heft by the emotional examination of war crime, acceptance, multigenerational trauma, ancestry and grief.
One is allowed a powerful meditation on this chain of cause and effects, when this humanitarians crisis should be carefully handled. A small complaint is that I feel like this novel could have been longer, considering it wanted to cover too many topics.

With concise prose and urgent tone, WANDERING SOULS captures the tough reality of Vietnamese refugees. Wandering souls whose story needed to be told (longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize.).

"Wandering Souls" is a story of family and survival. Anh leaves Vietnam in the 1970's as part of the mass exodus, being one of the "boat people" that survives the treacherous journey. She starts a new life in Great Britain. Anh's trauma is never resolved and she is left with a survivors guilt, and the haunting of those that were left behind. There are voices of “wandering souls” unable to find peace because they were not laid to rest. Though this story is an exploration of diaspora, the horrifying history surrounding the War in Vietnam and the aftershocks of it all and how generational trauma can be carried on.

This story felt similar in its voice to [book:Four Treasures of the Sky|55987334]. "Wandering Souls" is a haunting, harrowing story. It has a strange omniscient, otherness to it, especially with Dao's voice. This was a quick read with short chapters and certainly packed a punch - it really exposed a sliver of the darkness that surrounds of this part of history.

Pub Date 21 Mar 2023 | Henry Holt & Company, Henry Holt and Co.
Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 Longlist (Fourth Estate)

Trigger Warnings: Death, massacres, drowning, grief, war, racism, mentions of alcohol and drug use

Wandering Souls opens in 1978 in Vietnam as Anh and her brother, 14-year-old Minh and 10-year-old Thanh are packing for their trip to a refugee camp in Hong Kong ahead of the rest of their family before they make their way to their Uncle in America. Anh and her brothers make it to Hong Kong, but the rest of the family unfortunately don’t make it through their journey. The siblings eventually get accepted into Great Britain and over the next number of years, struggle to carve out a life for themselves in a country that’s not their own.

Told mostly through Anh’s POV, historical research, voices from lost family, and an unnamed narrator, Wandering Souls follows the lives of the last members of a family marked by war and loss and their persistence in the pursuit of a better future that they set out for years ago.

I read this book in one day, in roughly three settings. The prose of this novel were beautifully written and an emotional rollercoaster that will warrant a box of tissues for sure. Cecile Pin sprinkles in news articles and historical facts, along with personal experiences from an unnamed narrator between sections from the siblings.

This novel really deals with grief and survivor’s guilt of the three siblings. Their parents had such high hopes and dreams for them in America, but when they don’t make it there and are instead in the UK, they have to figure out what they will do instead.

Wandering Souls also opened my eyes to a lot of the horrors Vietnamese people experienced around the world as a result of the Vietnam War. I didn’t know who “boat people” were and both the piracy that could happen to them or the horrid conditions they had to travel in. Or the Koh Kra Island refugee massacres. Even in their own country, the psychological warfare the American would put them through with recordings of voices in the forests.

The dark side of immigration is shined on by Pin, but even with all the heartache, racism, and struggles the characters go through in this book, overall, it’s still about family, love, and grief. I couldn’t put this book down and I can see many others opening their hearts to this family and their journey.

*Thank you Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for a digital advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review

This book.... what can I possibly say about the beauty and struggle that this book emanates. This book tells the decidedly tragic story of three children, sent ahead by their parents to make a home in a new country, after the Vietnam War. This book is full of tragedy (in the story) and beauty (in the writing style and the story). and it kept me wanting more and more from this compact book.

I learned, through this beautiful tale, of the struggle that the Vietnamese Boat People had, and the sacrifices that they had to make to be safe, and to stay safe, after their world crumbled around them after conflict and war.

This book also shows how split second choices (in the case of the book, saying that the trio was "all alone" in this world, even when they had family in America) can affect the whole trajectory of your life.

The writing of this book was just beautiful, with so much lyrical prose and language, it is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Thanks to Henry Holt and Co. for the copy of this book.

"Knowledge allows remembering, and remembering is honoring."

Ahn, along with her brothers Thanh and Minh, begin a journey to Hong Kong after American troops leave Vietnam. Expecting to reunite with the rest of their family, they find that they are now all that remains and Ahn is left in charge of her brothers. They are admitted into the UK as one of the 10,000 "boat people" allowed by Margaret Thatcher - but not without struggles and opposition.

I loved the structure of this novel. Not only were there past and present timelines, there were also musings from deceased ancestors and non-fiction article interludes. This setup allowed me to learn the facts from this period in history and generational trauma while also listening to a generational story and feeling the emotions of this refugee story. I appreciated learning about Operation Wandering Soul, Margaret Thatcher's immigration policies, and Koh Kra Island massacres - these are all pieces of history that I hadn't studied before, and I'm truly glad that I read this book.

Read if you:
- enjoyed the structure of No Land to Light On
- love immigrant and generational stories
- want to learn more about "boat people" and Margaret Thatcher's immigration policies
- want to support a BIPOC debut

What a beautiful book.
What an incredible writing style.
What an emotional read.


OMG.


Add this book to your TBR right now! It’s a little over 200 pages and it’ll rip your heart out.


The year is 1978. Anh, Minh, and Thanh leave the rest of their family to go to Hong Kong, and from there, travel to the US in search of the American Dream.


The boat where their parents and other siblings were doesn’t make it, and the three of them are now orphaned. Anh is sixteen and she becomes the caretaker of her young brother.


They spend years in a refugee campus waiting for any country to take them in.


They finally receive the news that they can start a life in the UK. It’s a clean start, and they can honor their family's sacrifices by trying to have a good life.


But of course, it’s not that easy.


I felt so attached to these characters, I was really hoping they’d have a good life. And I think above all, this story is real. It’s relatable. There’s pain, there’s racism, but there’s also love, and new beginnings.

“wandering souls” is a haunting novel that will stick with you long after you finish it. there are two timelines running simultaneously and the soul of a dead brother telling his own story. we follow anh, minh, and thanh on their journey from thailand to the uk after the deaths of their family. the three siblings are young, anh the oldest at 16. as head of the family, anh has to make incredibly tough decisions and cope with her own traumas.

this is a story about family, love, and death. it’s absolutely heartbreaking at times, cecile pi showing us the dark reality of immigrants and the horrors unleashed on vietnamese people across the world. there is light in that darkness, though. it’s a gripping novel i could not put down.

thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

After the Fall of Saigon, sixteen-year old Anh is tasked with traveling from Vietnam to a refugee camp in Hong Kong with her two brothers. They travel ahead of their parents and younger siblings but are devastated when they find out later that their family did not survive the journey to meet them. They eventually immigrate to the UK and are faced with continual challenges of survival and assimilation in the new country.

As a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I am always in search of stories that I can tie to my experience and to my parents' experience. As I read more stories that involve the Vietnam war and Vietnamese refugees, I am reminded how many shared experiences Vietnamese refugees had, no matter where they immigrated to. On the other side of the coin, there were some different experiences for Vietnamese refugees, depending on where they landed. I enjoy learning about these stories, making connections with my own family history.

The book has a lot to unpack about loss, survivor's guilt, transgenerational trauma, racism, and how we define what we call "home". Told from several points of view, we get perspectives from the immigrants, children of immigrants, soldiers, and even ancestors. I don't know if I liked the multiple points-of-view, as I prefer to deep dive into one or two perspectives instead of splitting my attention. In the end, as Anh found peace with her family and connecting with her past, it all came together.

Pick up this novel for a deeply moving, heartbreaking, and intriguing historical fiction book about the struggles of Vietnamese refugees.

⚠️: war, death of a loved one, racism, mention of rape and murder

The story line was good but how it was told and put together was confusing and left me unfulfilled. I wanted to feel more for the characters but didn’t really connect. I wish there was time to get to know them better and understand each of their perspectives during major events as well as get insights in to their culture. I wanted more descriptions of their environments and situations as they would have been back then. I think the author had a lot of great thoughts, may be a good outline but never fully expanded.

This was a tough novel about Vietnamese refugees relocating to the UK. I appreciated the author's insight into the refugee experience and it was well-written.

This was such a stunning piece of work. I love the way everything weaved together as the story went along as well as how the story was structured. The topic touched of wandering souls and tying that back with cultural context made everything even more touching than it already was. I can't wait for this to come out so I can snatch a physical copy for my shelf and place it next to all of my other Viet books. And this might be too soon to say but I am highly looking forward to what Cecile Pin will put out next.

A haunting story about the consequences of war on ordinary citizens. A Vietnamese family divides into two groups to journey to America. One group makes it but of course the psychological effects of being the survivors lend to a difficult life. Refugees face many difficulties and develop strategies to cope and perhaps succeed. This book is heartbreaking and heartwarming. You will develop empathy that you didn’t think was possible, while learning about history of the Vietnam war. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

The story of Anh and her two brothers' escape by boat from Vietnam to Hong Kong seems realistic, including the pirates who board the refugee boat in a harrowing but eventually harmless incident The tales of their lives in camps in Hong Kong and in the U,K., while they are waiting to be taken in and found homes, are heart rending. I liked that the author showed the politics of the U.K. Prime Minister at the time and her reluctance to follow through with a promise to the U.N. to take in 10,000 refugees over three years.

The novel is unusual to me because it follows these three refugees over time trying to reconcile their former lives with their present. I liked that they find peace and a sort of closure by keeping their traditions and having the ashes of those they lost - their parents and siblings - in their homes in the U.K.

It is a moving account of one family that represents, in many ways, many of those who perished and who survived in their flight from a war torn and postwar Vietnam.

In 1978, a family with seven children plans to escape Vietnam and settle in the US, sending the three oldest children ahead of them. Those three children, Anh, Thanh, and Minh, are in a refugee camp in Hong Kong when they learn that the rest of their family was murdered by pirates. The grief from this horrible loss haunts them throughout their lives as they settle, not as planned, in the UK. The siblings have to hang on one another as they grieve both their family and some of their dreams while adjusting to an unfamiliar country.

This is a pretty short book, and I kind of wanted it to be both longer and shorter—longer, because it felt like a lot was underexplored. I wanted more about the textures of the siblings’ lives in the UK. It flashed forward a few times to the 2010s and 2020s, which I thought was a great move, but I also wanted more there. And I often felt like certain things could be shorter—the book sometimes told more than it showed, and a lot of sentences felt a bit obvious.

The premise of the book and a lot of its stylistic choices are really interesting. One of the dead brothers speaks as a ghost in interchapters, and the main narrative is braided with information about “Operation Wandering Soul,” which involved US soldiers fighting dirty by tricking Vietnamese people into thinking their dead’s souls were not at rest. I also loved how a frame narrative, the details of which I won’t spoil, unraveled gradually. There was a lot of promise here, but I wish there had been more time and space for all of this book’s ambitious ideas to come to full fruition.

The novel was boring and at times confusing. The switch from first person to third person was unclear and often left me wondering who the focalizer was. Titbits like Margaret Thatcher's letter seemed like an attempt to add unnecessary context to a narrative that was quite clear from the start. The writing was drab, the dialogue bland, and at times unimaginative. I could only get through about a third of the book. While the concept behind the story and the plot is interesting, the writing made it seem less like a novel and more like a timeline of the three siblings.

Wandering Souls features writing that is alive and never too sentimental. It is the story of a young Vietnamese and their experiences looking for a better or at least more hopeful future.
Themes of war, trauma, death and prejudice prevail throughout the book reminding readers that trauma is ugly and hard to endure.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review

Wandering Souls is a moving debut novel by Cecile Pin reflecting on family and complex trauma. Anh is the eldest daughter in a family of nine in Vietnam in the aftermath of the War. It is a turbulent time in the country and her parents decide the family will have better opportunities fleeing the country in hopes of meeting a family member in the US with a stopover in Hong Kong. Anh's parents send her and two of her younger brothers Minh and Thanh ahead of the rest of the family to make their way to Hong Kong. Tragedy strikes, leaving the three siblings as orphans, making Anh caregiver to her younger brothers and the decision maker for their future journey. We follow the siblings through the refugee camp in Hong Kong to one in the UK before settling in council housing in London. Each sibling deals with grief and trauma differently. Pin is able to paint a picture of prolonged grief. How does the relationship with Anh and her brothers evolve over time? How are they integrated into British society? The book's title takes its name from a Vietnamese tradition of Wandering Souls where people need a proper burial in their hometown or their souls are cursed to wander the Earth aimlessly as ghosts. Pin incorporates this concept in a unique way. This is truly a moving debut novel.

Thank you to Henry Holt & Co. via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

I was so impressed that this was a debut novel - it is beautifully written, moving, and difficult to put down. Anh’s story felt deeply researched but never dry, and the level of detail really impressed me. Her relationship with her brothers was also lovely, and overall I just really enjoyed this book and am excited to see what Pin does next.

Oh my gosh I absolutely adored this book! I have to admit, it’s outside my normal “niche,” but I loved it!