The Mountains Sing

The Mountains Sing is a 2020 historical fiction novel by Vietnamese author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. Though this is Nguyễn’s first novel and her first English-language work, she has been publishing poetry in Vietnamese since 2006. A critical and popular success, Nguyễn’s novel won several literary awards and was named a best book of 2020 by multiple media establishments. Like the novel’s protagonist, Nguyễn grew up in Vietnam in the wake of the Vietnam War and developed an early passion for writing. These similarities, combined with Nguyễn’s lifelong curiosity about her nation’s people and history, make her voice a strong one for this story.

As the book itself does, this guide preserves Vietnamese convention in its presentation of full names, positioning the family name first and the given name(s) last. Contrary to the common practice of omitting diacritics when anglicizing Vietnamese names and terms, this guide follows the author’s practice of including them, except for placenames like Hanoi and Vietnam that are already familiar without diacritics to an anglophone audience, though these are presented unadjusted (i.e., Hà Nội and Việt Nam) when quoting.

This guide refers to the 2020 Algonquin Books hardcover first edition.

Plot Summary

The Mountains Sing begins in 2012 with Hương, a woman living in Hanoi, making an offering to her late grandmother Diệu Lan. Remembering her grandmother’s wisdom, Hương begins to tell the story of her youth. Though she first returns to her own childhood, subsequent chapters alternate between her story and her grandmother’s.

Diệu Lan’s story begins in the 1930s, the final years of French colonial control of Vietnam. As a young girl, she lives a charmed life on her family’s farm in central Vietnam with her parents, her older brother Công, their housekeeper Auntie Tú, and Master Thịnh, a worldly live-in tutor. At age 10, Diệu Lan receives an ominous fortune from the local fortune-teller. Her mother labors to undo this fate, and her adolescence proceeds well enough for the family to forget it.

Thanks to Thịnh’s influence, Diệu Lan’s parents do not intervene in her romantic pursuits. She falls in love with and marries an educated local named Hùng. By the time World War II comes to Vietnam, they have three children: Minh, Ngọc (Hương’s mother), and Đạt. In 1942, over Hùng’s objections, Diệu Lan accompanies her father and brother on a trading trip north to Hanoi. En route, Japanese soldiers kill Diệu Lan’s father. Three years later, the Great Famine of 1945 strikes, and Diệu Lan and her mother venture to the forest in a desperate search for food. They find a cornfield and begin harvesting, but the brutal man who owns it, whom they call Wicked Ghost, kills Diệu Lan’s mother. Wicked Ghost’s servant Hải saves Diệu Lan and, via a significant donation of corn, her family. Công and Hùng hunt Wicked Ghost down but, finding him drunk, take pity on him. The family employs Hải, and Wicked Ghost disappears.

The next decade brings comparative peace and prosperity, as well as three more children for Diệu Lan and Hùng: Thuận, Hạnh, and Sáng. However, tragedy strikes again in 1955 as the Communist Party consolidates its power over North Vietnam. Party officials kill Hùng, poisoning him for speaking out at a local meeting. That autumn, the Land Reform purges sweep across northern Vietnam, with mobs of peasants violently seizing property to redivide it evenly. Though Tú attempts to warn Diệu Lan that she is a likely target, Diệu Lan downplays these concerns. Later that day, a mob arrives, detains the entire family, and seizes their homestead. Tú helps Diệu Lan escape with all her children save Minh, who was taken with Công to be executed. Tú informs Diệu Lan that Minh managed to escape, but Công is dead.

Seeking help from Thịnh, who has long since returned home to Hanoi, Diệu Lan begins a risky flight northward with her five remaining children. Recognizing the increased risk of traveling in such a group, Diệu Lan finds places for each of her children to stay and from which she can retrieve them once tensions have cooled and she has gotten back on her feet. Arriving in Hanoi with only baby Sáng, Diệu Lan learns that Thịnh is dead but gets a job as a housekeeper from his nephew Toàn. Thanks to self-defense lessons from a neighbor, Diệu Lan saves Toàn and his wife Châu from an armed robber. Châu, who has been jealous of Diệu Lan from the moment they met, fires Diệu Lan but sends her away with highly valuable coins that enable her to retrieve the four children she left behind. They build a new life in Hanoi, but Diệu Lan struggles with feelings of guilt and failure, especially over Minh’s continued absence.

Hương’s story picks up nearly two decades later in 1972 when she is 12 years old. It is the height of the Vietnam War, and Hương’s father Hoàng, as well as the three uncles she knows, are off fighting for the North. Ngọc has gone in search of her husband, leaving Hương in Diệu Lan’s care. After fleeing to the mountains to escape bombing raids on Hanoi, they return to find their home destroyed. Hạnh leaves her family to help Diệu Lan and Hương rebuild. Soon after her departure, the devastating news of Thuận’s death arrives. Meanwhile, Diệu Lan finds her teaching salary insufficient and becomes a con buôn, a black-market trader. This leads to social ostracism for both Diệu Lan and Hương, but their standard of living improves considerably.

In 1975, the war begins to end, and Ngọc returns home, debilitated by trauma. Her sister-in-law Duyên takes her in to care for her, causing profound feelings of insecurity for Hương that she feels can only be remedied by her father’s return. Instead, she gets Sáng, who refuses to associate with the family because he fears his mother’s work is incompatible with his devotion to the Communist Party, followed by Đạt, who has lost both his legs and has an alcohol use disorder. Đạt does bring Hương a wooden Sơn ca bird, which Hoàng carved for her and entrusted to Đạt at their final meeting.

Đạt persuades Ngọc to move back in to their mother’s home, but Ngọc’s condition barely improves. One day when Ngọc is out, Hương steals her mother’s diary and learns that her trauma is centered on a wartime pregnancy and abortion. Ngọc catches her, which leads to a vicious dispute followed by an emotional reconciliation, in which Ngọc explains what the diary implied but Hương failed to grasp: that the pregnancy was the result of rape by South Vietnamese soldiers. Ngọc makes a significant recovery, as does Đạt. Thanks to Ngọc’s medical support and his girlfriend Nhung’s persistence, he gives up drinking, and he and Nhung become engaged. Efforts to improve relations with Sáng remain unsuccessful, though he and his pregnant wife Hoa accept weekly food deliveries from Diệu Lan. Due to Sáng’s wartime exposure to Agent Orange, their baby is stillborn, and Hoa kicks Sáng out. Though he remains unwilling to resume relations with his mother, he agrees to aid her and Hạnh, who has relocated to southern Vietnam with her family, in efforts to locate Minh. Hương grows close with Tâm, a boy at her school who recently moved from a province near her own family’s ancestral home, and they begin dating.

Three years later, Hương, Ngọc, Đạt, and Diệu Lan travel south to visit Minh, who has finally contacted them. After rendezvousing with Hạnh, they find Minh in a shack. The reunion is joyous yet tearful, for Minh is terminally ill. He gives them a letter to explain his life since he last saw them 24 years prior. After the purge, a kind family brought him south. Eventually, he married their daughter Linh, and they had two children. When the war came, he refused his father-in-law's offer to help him dodge the draft. Though Minh worried he might encounter his brothers across enemy lines, he felt great anger at the Communists for what they had done to his family. After the war, he was abducted and sent to a so-called reeducation camp, an experience that nearly killed him. Tainted by association with him, his family fled to the United States soon after his return, but Minh, unable to abandon the possibility of reuniting with his birth family, made the difficult decision to stay. Under constant government scrutiny, his life remained a struggle, and contact northward continued to be dangerously unwise. Minh’s story shocks the family, and Hạnh leaves immediately to avoid the negative repercussions association with Minh could have for her family. Two days later, Sáng arrives, and Minh dies.

The next year, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, Hương visits her ancestral home for the first time. From there, they proceed to Tâm’s village to meet his family, as he has proposed to Hương. The visit is cut short when they discover with horror that Tâm’s grandfather is Wicked Ghost. Hương breaks off all contact with Tâm, which devastates them both. Still, Hương resists Tâm’s attempts to reconcile. A few months later, Diệu Lan informs Hương that Tâm and his parents visited her, apologized for Wicked Ghost’s crimes, and returned a priceless family heirloom that he had stolen. To Hương’s immense relief, Diệu Lan gives their union her blessing.

The novel ends with an episode from 2017 in which Hương and Tâm visit Diệu Lan’s grave with their two children. Together, they burn a manuscript Hương has composed of her and her grandmother’s stories, trusting the smoke to carry the narrative to her in heaven.