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    Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
    Unavailable
    Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
    Unavailable
    Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
    Ebook492 pages9 hours

    Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022

    By Violet Kupersmith

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    'Fantastic' The Sunday Times * 'Beautiful, brilliant, powerful' Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

    Part ghost story, part searing exploration of Vietnam's colonial past, Violet Kupersmith's debut novel is a must read for fans of Cecile Pin, NoViolet Bulowayo or Ruth Ozeki

    Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.

    1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience.

    2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

    The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Violet Kupersmith's heart-pounding fever dream of a novel hurtles through the ghostly secrets of Vietnamese history to create an immersive, playful, utterly unforgettable debut.

    'Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith's first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities' David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOneworld Publications
    Release dateJul 8, 2021
    ISBN9780861541003
    Unavailable
    Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
    Author

    Violet Kupersmith

    Violet Kupersmith is the author of the short story collection The Frangipani Hotel. She previously taught English with the Fulbright programme in the Mekong Delta, and was a creative writing fellow at the University of East Anglia. She has lived in Da Lat and Saigon, and is currently based in the United States. Her first novel, Build Your House Around My Body, was a Finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in 2021.

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    Reviews for Build Your House Around My Body

    4/5

    51 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Interesting read. Got to say it's my first of this kind. The author managed to bring the characters and places to life with this debut work of hers. The story takes the reader from the present, to the past, and as the story unravels, the pieces begin to fall into places where you can see how each event and characters were connected. Worth a read.
    • 4/5
      Amazing bit of magical realism, history lessons, and storytelling set in Viet Nam. The back and forth of timelines threw me occasionally, as did the ending, but wow!2022 read.
    • 5/5
      It is hard to express how beautifully tragic and tragically beautiful this novel is. I feel blessed getting to read it.
    • 4/5
      The most amazing thing for me about this book was how the story starts off very random with a lot of moving parts and people, but as we keep reading and moving down chapters, their connections and how they relate begin to unfold and I had a lot of, oh wow, so that’s why moments.

      Touched on the history of Vietnam, the trauma brought forth through the French colonisation, supernatural experiences and a bit of humour.
    • 5/5
      Ever since reading an Early Reviewer copy of Kupersmith's first book, a uniquely good short story collection, I looked forward to her first novel. Eight whole years later, I can say that it was well worth the wait. This is a meaningful page-turner. It isn't simply the masterful way in which the real world of this novel is permeated with the supernatural. It's the ways in which those same supernatural elements turn out to be downright haunted by the real world.
    • 3/5
      I can't remember why I wanted to read this book and I am very surprised that I finished it. I think I kept waiting for it to coalesce and for me, it never did.
    • 4/5
      Haunting, unsettling, & powerfully dazzling!Kupersmith’s deftly crafted and inherently crafted debut novel showcases her erudite skills as a compelling storyteller in this puzzling tale of two young woman mysteriously disappearing decades apart.In 2010, 22- year-old half White American half Vietnamese Winnie Nguyen arrives in Saigon under the guise to teach English but her true hope is to find a place where she fits in. The beginning chapters concentrate on Winnie’s adventures and the reader feels the tensions and suspense as the makings of the mysterious unknowns are beginning to leave a bread crumb that begins to intrigue and tickle at our curiosity. Each chapter starts with a time before and after Winnie’s disappearance, and begins the introductions to the notable secondary characters and their accompanying vignettes full of anguish riddled action across a century of Vietnamese history and folklore.The novel propels the exhilarating plot to a nerve-racking end that expertly ties the characters and story threads together.Rich atmosphere, meticulous details, and the masterful use of poetic language makes for a mesmerizing and enjoyable read. I received a copy of this book from GoodReads and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

      1 person found this helpful