Description

“Come for the wide-ranging plot, stay for the atmosphere.

Spun from grotesque body horror, Vietnamese folklore, magical realism, and revenge, this book is a whirlwind of fragmented narratives slowly coming together. It is not an easy read or for the faint of heart; there are dozens of characters, a generational history of trauma, multiple timelines written achronologically, and the overall unease of determining real from not-real.

Kupersmith has given us a gorgeously written, absolutely bizarre, and unnerving puzzle of a book whose pieces have malleable edges until the end.”

<3 Miranda

Over the course of the novel, the fates of three women will lock together in an exhilarating series of nested narratives. Along the way, we meet a young boy sent to a boarding school in the mountains for the métis children of French expatriates just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule in 1945; two Frenchmen trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co., called to investigate 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 the three women together.

CW: sexual assault