Ru

Kim Thúy’s Ru made the 2012 Giller Prize Short List.

From the book cover:
I came into the world during the Tet Offensive, in the early days of the Year of the Monkey, when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns.
I first saw the light of day of Saigon, where firecrackers, fragmented into a thousands shreds, coloured in ground red like the petals of cherry blossoms or like the blood of the two million soldiers deployed and scattered throughout the villages and cities of a Vietnam that had been ripped in two.
I was born in the shadow of skies adorned with fireworks, decorated with garlands of light, shot through with rockets and missiles. The purpose of my birth was to replace lives that had been lost. My life's duty was to prolong that of my mother.

My Review:
Based on the author's childhood and immigration to Montreal in the mid-1970s, Ru reads like a series of poems. It can be a bit hard to follow as the plot jumps back and forth in time. Nonetheless, it is an amazing narrative of the experience of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s.

The book's narrator and protagonist, Nguyen An Tinh, shares her experiences as a member of a  wealthy South Vietnamese family, to her family's flight amidst the danger and uncertainty of the Vietnamese war. The family, along with many of their relatives eventually settle in Quebec. Nguyen's story is in places over-the-top sad. At times I found myself questioning the truth in all of it. On the first page, she claims that she was born to replace the lives lost during the Tet offensive and to prolong her mother's life. In all of the poems that make up the novel, not one illustrated this summary. In fact, her mother seems to be a strong willed woman who was able to adapt quickly to the family's changing circumstances, and was thus able to coach her children to make the most of a new life.

Then there are the sections where she shares the experiences of sex workers, victims of sexual interference and the heritage of the children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers. Having all of these other stories mixed into Nguyen's story gave the novel of feeling of desperation. Like someone who's been without a voice for too many years and all of a sudden has a voice and feels compelled to spew everything least their audience should disappear.

4/5