This was a fun one. The author has said in interviews that she wanted to portray the complexities of Vietnamese American/diaspora relationships between women, and she wanted the women to be messy and make mistakes and have a really hard time not making the same mistakes again and again. So she wrote about a family of cursed Vietnamese women!
From the blurb: “Everyone in Orange County’s Little Saigon knew that the Duong sisters were cursed. It started with their ancestor, Oanh, who dared to leave her marriage for true love—so a fearsome Vietnamese witch cursed Oanh and her descendants so that they would never find love or happiness, and the Duong women would give birth to daughters, never sons.”
This book starts when it becomes clear that it’s time for the Duong women to break their curse, and to change the way they have been living their lives and the ways they relate to each other.
This book really worked for me. The women do, eventually, learn from their mistakes, but it takes a lot of hard work and some truly ridiculous circumstances (and A LOT of ridiculous fights, especially between the three sisters Mai, Minh, and Kuyen). The book pretty admirably pulls off the tightrope act of being outrageous and sad at the same time. For me at least, this book was also very funny.
There is a family tree at the beginning of the book that I referred to frequently, but the author does a really good job of making each woman their own unique character, so you’d probably be fine if you’re doing the audio or the ebook, where it’s harder to refer to.
I’m definitely in for more of this author’s writing.
