metawish's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
While the book might be about a Vietnamese American family's experience, anyone who has immigrant parents will see themselves here. The author delves into how families work and how our histories change the context of our actions, humanizing parents and children alike. The author also experiments with time in the plot, an experiment I find successful in revealing information and moving the plot forward.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, War, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Animal death, Bullying, Sexual assault, and Murder
Minor: Rape
graceesford's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Colonisation, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Death, Racial slurs, and War
Minor: Rape
wenwanzhao's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I’m always intrigued by books that have an non-chronological timeline, and the backwards nature of Daughters of the New Year definitely felt important to the story that was being told. The more we went back in time, the more I felt like the book was moving away from our reality, which was a bit trippy but not un-enjoyable.
The immigrant child anecdotes in this story can seem a bit tiresome at times, but it seems unfair to blame someone for retelling an honest experience. The book thrives in its second part, where we delve into the ancestors of the characters we are originally introduced to. It’s fascinating to see how the present we are introduced to comes into play.
I admit to expecting more closure on the arcs of the three sisters centred in the blurb, but I suppose it’s just more reason to never trust a summary written by a publisher. Tran’s writing is evocative without being overbearing, and it kept me more hooked into a book than I have been in a while.
The immigrant child anecdotes in this story can seem a bit tiresome at times, but it seems unfair to blame someone for retelling an honest experience. The book thrives in its second part, where we delve into the ancestors of the characters we are originally introduced to. It’s fascinating to see how the present we are introduced to comes into play.
I admit to expecting more closure on the arcs of the three sisters centred in the blurb, but I suppose it’s just more reason to never trust a summary written by a publisher. Tran’s writing is evocative without being overbearing, and it kept me more hooked into a book than I have been in a while.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Rape, Pregnancy, Murder, Death of parent, War, Racism, and Death
musubi_mumma's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I am a sucker for a slow, immersive, multi-generational historical fiction. I love the unwinding of family secrets and histories. Families are spaces of ordinary and extraordinary trauma; intense love also breeds intense regret, jealousies, animosities. Tragedy binds and creates familial bonds stronger than blood. And, of course, as a historian I love getting a glimpse into a past where the reasons and logics behind piety, duty, and love are complex, sometimes contradictory, colored with personal suffering, traditions, and the institutions of humanity-at-large — as in this case, French colonialism and Confucian patriarchy.
That is the hinge around which Daughters of the New Year swivels. This novel is an honest portrait of the brutal historical and cultural complexities that shape familial love.
The reader is given a privileged view into the minds, hearts, and philosophies of several generations of Vietnamese women. It is a novel about why and how mothering, motherhood, and filial duty are never straightforward, why these acts of love are volatile constructions of history and culture. Time and place alter the modes by which we care for one another, show each other love. What is an expression of affection for one generation is manipulation to the next. What is piety to one generation is an empty gesture for another. The reasons why mothers do what they do, why sometimes their love crushes their daughters, are molded by forces beyond their control: war, racism, patriarchy. Yet, for all those differences, there is one motivation behind these acts: the desire to provide the next generation with more than what the previous had. This is the love embedded in families.
The reader is given a privileged view of an excavation of familial love through Vietnamese and American history. Through chapters narrated by a daughter of this family, daughters descended through a matriarchal bloodline, the reader gets an interior view of the characters’ minds. Each of them has a different voice in this novel. EM. Tran’s prose is a beautiful thread throughout, binding their stories together, but each of the characters speak with their own, unique voice. Each chapter reveals its narrator’s logic, their historical context; explains why they did the things they did — even perhaps knowing that those acts would somehow traumatize the next generation.
There is Nhi and her sisters, the American generation. There is their mother, Xuan; their aunt, Xuan’s sister; there is their grandmother; a line of women, as if holding hands, unbroken, their spirits resiliently swaying in the winds of change and time going all the way back to the epic and legendary Trung sisters. Daughters of the New Year is about these women.
Fans of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, or Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko will enjoy Tran’s Daughters of the New Year.
That is the hinge around which Daughters of the New Year swivels. This novel is an honest portrait of the brutal historical and cultural complexities that shape familial love.
The reader is given a privileged view into the minds, hearts, and philosophies of several generations of Vietnamese women. It is a novel about why and how mothering, motherhood, and filial duty are never straightforward, why these acts of love are volatile constructions of history and culture. Time and place alter the modes by which we care for one another, show each other love. What is an expression of affection for one generation is manipulation to the next. What is piety to one generation is an empty gesture for another. The reasons why mothers do what they do, why sometimes their love crushes their daughters, are molded by forces beyond their control: war, racism, patriarchy. Yet, for all those differences, there is one motivation behind these acts: the desire to provide the next generation with more than what the previous had. This is the love embedded in families.
The reader is given a privileged view of an excavation of familial love through Vietnamese and American history. Through chapters narrated by a daughter of this family, daughters descended through a matriarchal bloodline, the reader gets an interior view of the characters’ minds. Each of them has a different voice in this novel. EM. Tran’s prose is a beautiful thread throughout, binding their stories together, but each of the characters speak with their own, unique voice. Each chapter reveals its narrator’s logic, their historical context; explains why they did the things they did — even perhaps knowing that those acts would somehow traumatize the next generation.
There is Nhi and her sisters, the American generation. There is their mother, Xuan; their aunt, Xuan’s sister; there is their grandmother; a line of women, as if holding hands, unbroken, their spirits resiliently swaying in the winds of change and time going all the way back to the epic and legendary Trung sisters. Daughters of the New Year is about these women.
Fans of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, or Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko will enjoy Tran’s Daughters of the New Year.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Classism, Colonisation, Death of parent, Racism, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and War
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