"I should have chosen the moment before the  arrival of my children, for since then I've lost the option of dying.  The sharp smell of their sun-baked hair, the smell of sweat on their  backs when they wake from a nightmare, the dusty smell of their hands  when they leave a classroom, meant that I had to live, to be dazzled by  the shadow of their eyelashes, moved by a snowflake, bowled over by a  tear on their cheek. My children have given me the exclusive power to  blow on a wound to make the pain disappear, to understand words  unpronounced, to possess the universal truth, to be a fairy. A fairy smitten with the way they smell."

I don't often include quotes in my book reviews, but ohh this one hits hard. 

Ru is a beautiful and moving story.

It's fiction but is heavily based on Kim Thúy's own life. Through the main character we see her experiences being born in Vietnam during the war, fleeing the country by boat, life in a refugee camp in Malaysia and her family eventually settling in Canada. Intertwined through the book we also see her musings on motherhood, on Vietnamese family traditions,  on language and more.

The story is told through vignettes, that jump through time and from country to country. Each word is carefully chosen to pack a punch. Each vignette paints a vivid picture, creating a rich reading experience. Ru is a short book and Kim Thúy is able to say so much with so few words.