One of the things I miss most about physical libraries is serendipity. Sometimes, search weirdness can make up for that. I actually wanted to read Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Refugees, but my library didn't have it. they did have this book, which is straight literary fiction, a multi-generational story about overcoming the trauma of historical events.

The Mountains Sing follows two parallel tracks. In the present is Tran, growing up in Hanoi in the 1970s with her grandmother. Tran's mother, father, and three uncles have all gone south as part of the NVA, and after an American bombing raid, the story is about the return of the traumatized veterans in her family, or the eternal absence.

The other track is her grandmother's stories, growing up as a rich peasant in the 1940s and 50s. These were truly awful times for Vietnam. Grandma's father is decapitated by the occupying Japanese for taking potatoes to Hanoi. Everybody nearly starves to death in the post-war famine (2 million Vietnamese died). In the Communist land reform, following the partition, Grandmother is denounced and forced to flee with her five children, begging on the road and making desperate bargains to survive.

But this is a sentimental story, and things work out mostly okay in the end. There's some nice moments of tenderness with Tran, and the sensual invocation of rural Vietnam, but I've left unsatisfied with this book, like a meal missing a main course.