Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Fourth Estate)
This book has been longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize and
while I don’t have time to read the whole longlist this one really leapt out at
me and I am so pleased that it did.
To my shame the Vietnam War is not something I know a lot
about, in fact I think I know more about the end of French rule in Indochina
than I do about the American conflict, and the fallout through the 1970s and
1980s (and most of this comes from the musical Miss Saigon which is not a great
admission).
Wandering Souls is told in many voices but all of them relate
to the story of siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh as they flee Vietnam in one of the
small boats first to Hong Kong and then the UK. To say much more will spoil the way
the book unfolds and I really wouldn’t want that to be the case as I loved it
so much.
It is a shortish book but one that punches well above its
weight in many ways and at more than one point I was in tears as well as
reaching for my phone to research more about the things mentioned. It opens up
so many things to talk about, and I also liked the exploration of
intergenerational trauma which I’ve read a lot about regarding the Holocaust
but hadn’t thought about in regards to other conflicts.
I also came away really wanting to try some of the food that
is eaten in the book but this feels a very shallow response to such a great book.
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