A review by mesal
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

emotional hopeful

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

I don't know if I'm getting dumber or my taste in books is changing or if literary fiction is just getting worse, but very few of the litfic novels I read this year were actually really good. So many of them are similar; it's as if authors have nothing else to write about. This one follows the oft-repeated formula of three generations of women living in the same house where the crumbling house in bad shape is a metaphor for their family (

and the house burns down in the end for even more imagery

). Banyan Moon did do a pretty good job with this formula, and on the whole I thought this was a good book, but what I really want is for some of these formulas to be retired. Write something new!