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    Build Your House Around My Body: A Novel
    Build Your House Around My Body: A Novel
    Build Your House Around My Body: A Novel
    Audiobook15 hours

    Build Your House Around My Body: A Novel

    Written by Violet Kupersmith

    Narrated by Quyen Ngo

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, this ingenious novel spins half a century of Vietnamese history and folklore into “a thrilling read, acrobatic and filled with verve” (The New York Times Editors’ Choice).
     
    FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews

    “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
    Two young 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 loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed. 

    2011    : A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. 

    The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Alongside them, we meet a young boy who is sent to a boarding school for the métis children of French expatriates, just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule; two Frenchmen who are trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co., who find themselves investigating strange occurrences in a farmhouse on the edge of a forest. Each new character and timeline brings us one step closer to understanding what binds them all. 

    Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last page.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateJul 6, 2021
    ISBN9780593412268
    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

    53 ratings5 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
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