Banyan Moon by Thao Thai is a debut novel that seems destined to show up on everyone’s summer reading list this year. The characters are well-drawn and mysterious, and, as each chapter unfolds, their secrets become more engaging.
The setting gives the novel a Southern Gothic atmosphere — a crumbling mansion known as the Banyan House, situated in the swamplands of the Florida coast — but Banyan Moon is not a typical Southern Gothic tale or even a straightforward mystery. It weaves together the stories of three generations of Vietnamese-American women, and its most striking influence is the Vietnamese folktale of Chú Cuội, the man in the moon. The story of Chú Cuội — carried into the sky by a magical banyan tree — informs the way that the three narrators think about their home, their lives and each other.
The novel begins when Ann Tran gets the news that her grandmother has died. This news comes just after Ann learns that she is pregnant and also that her boyfriend has been unfaithful. With her own life so deeply disrupted, Ann returns home to Florida to cope with her grandmother’s death alongside her mother. Ann and her mother, Hương, have been somewhat estranged, but Ann’s grandmother, Minh, has willed her house — the Banyan House — to the mother and daughter jointly. The pair must decide what to do with the Gothic mansion that Minh has left cluttered with objects, memories, and secrets.
While the surviving Tran women do their best to move forward, the past looms large in their relationship and their daily lives. Ann avoids calls from her boyfriend back in Michigan, waiting to tell him about the pregnancy, while she spends more time with her high school friends. At the same time, Hương finds ways to care for herself, choosing distance from a recent affair and focusing on her new goal of learning to swim for the first time. The younger women are coping with their experiences of single motherhood in real time, while Minh’s similar experience is relayed in flashbacks.
To follow the individual developments, the narration shifts from chapter to chapter between each of the three women — Ann, Hương and Minh — and each of them speaks in first person. Though Minh’s death occurs early in the novel, she still has a story to tell. Minh’s spirit lingers near the Banyan House, providing commentary on Ann’s and Hương’s storylines while also providing Minh’s own backstory through flashbacks. Knowing Minh’s history allows readers to understand more about all of the Tran women than either Ann or Hương does. In this way, Minh’s presence affects how we read the story even though she may or may not be able to affect the actual experiences of other characters.
The uncertainty about how particular events or even objects affect the story stems from a sort of magical realism quality within the novel. At times, the house itself seems to have agency or influence. At other times, Minh’s spirit seems to affect outcomes. Readers will decide for themselves whether these influences are real or whether they are simply what the characters hope for. But Minh does narrate from beyond the grave, and for many readers her character will be the most intriguing.
Different readers may be drawn to different characters, and while we might expect the alignment to occur generationally, with younger readers feeling closer to Ann, that was not the case for me. The basic outline of Ann’s story may seem familiar to readers of popular fiction: a young woman in crisis returns to her hometown and finds comfort in family and friends from her younger years, despite their differences. Banyan Moon tells this story with compelling variations and cultural nuances, but Hương and Minh are the characters that set the novel apart. All three of the Tran women face the prospect of single motherhood, whether by choice or by chance, but Ann’s experience is yet to come. Hương and Minh have already experienced this struggle, and it’s clear that they are not simply good or bad mothers. Their sections of the novel hold the most tension as we see how their choices affected Ann and others, but we also see the circumstances they were forced to navigate.
With elements of magical realism and the Southern Gothic in a multiple narrator format, Banyan Moon provides a reading experience that is both familiar and inventive, making it perfect for summer reading. Many different readers will find points of interest in the Tran women and their stories, and the mysterious moments will generate plenty of discussion among the book clubs who are sure to take up this novel.
FICTION
Banyan Moon
Thao Thai
Mariner Books
Published June 27, 2023
Southern Review of Books 