Winnie is a Vietnamese American returning to Saigon as a young woman. After settling into a job and starting a relationship with a man called Long, she disappears. Decades before, in 1986, the young daughter of a family living in the highlands of the country, disappears after going into a rubber plantation. This story brings these women’s lives together through Long’s family; ghosts in the form of smoke; and poisonous cobras.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

BOOK SNAPS: This book is a puzzle, the solution of which has eluded me. The various strands of the story are too confusing, and I think that the ghost and spirit stories are overdone. The Guardian suggests that the “theme of justice and retribution is buried under the weight of a somewhat overcomplicated polyphonic narrative”. Kirkus thinks that “Kupersmith creates a rich and dazzling spectacle” and also refers to the diversity of genres (horror, humor, and historical fiction). For me there were snatches of humour only in some of the characters’ conversations. The overall effect of the book is definitely not humorous. I agree with Publishers Weekly in the necessity for “multiple pages of maps and dramatis personae at the novel’s opening” to “help ground the reader through this disorienting but captivating opus.”

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