Toot's Book Reviews: Spotlight, Review, Author Interview & Giveaway: A Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

Book Blurb & Info

A Mother’s Tale is a tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose set ting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their land scape and inhabitants.

Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

Buy Links

C&R Press
Amazon

Toot's Review by Betty Bee

“Barges cluttered the waterway and fishing nets threw silhouettes across the fiery water. She breathed in the metallic tang of fish, the wetly sweet smell of rot timbers, of boats and barges and waterlogged wooden stilts. Overhead crows circled, cawing noisily. Some came down flapping their wings in front of the slaughterhouse that sat back from the street. The birds waddled, preening themselves, waiting for throwaways of guts that butchers tossed out.”

An absolutely wonderful collection of short stories set inside the country of Vietnam around the time of the war. 'A Mother's Tale and Other Stories,' is an unforgettable work by the award-winning author Khanh Ha. Perfect for lovers of stories with a lot of atmosphere and deeply personal characterization, this collection features stories from all over Vietnam from the north to the south.

The first story in the collection is a tale about a young man who has been drafted into the war who befriends a man named Uncle Chung. Uncle Chung is living as a quadruple amputee, being taken care of by his cheating, neglectful wife. Over the course of their friendship, the young man begins taking care of Uncle Chung and learning things about himself in the process.

Including the story that shares it's name with the title of the book, “A Mother's Tale,” there are eleven stories over all. The stories range from detailing a young American soldier's correspondence to his mother back home, to a story about a young bride who discovers that her mother is living in a leper colony. Each story is defined by it's setting in Vietnam and the author's intimate and fascinating way with words.

This collection encapsulates a generation of traumatized people, both Vietnamese and American, who even after the war is finished, were still healing from the things that they went through. Ha weaves together stunning setting with relatable and flawed characters to create an unforgettable short story collection that is not to be missed.

Author Interview with Khanh Ha by Betty Bee

Hi Khanh, Thanks to agreeing to this interview.

Betty: How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?

Khanh: With literary fiction, you deal with characters more than with plots. You deal with spontaneity and dynamics of characterization which shapes the story line. You don’t shoehorn your characters into a predetermined plot. Depth of characterization is the heart of literary fiction in addition to the mood, the atmosphere, the ambience, the prose. Truthfully speaking, I do not know much about my characters until I write the first draft. Yet the writing itself causes a chemical reaction among my characters. By writing I mean the author begins exploring his fictional world inhabited by characters whom he has created in name only, until he interacts with them.

The characters and their names must be harmonious with their personality, or I’d risk misrepresenting them. It’s a must that you know your characters well—if literary fiction is what you write. Your savvy of life and knowledge of people is the essence of conceiving a well-developed character. Likely if I conceive a character well, his name will come automatically. The story will stall if a character is badly conceived. That make-believe world represented by my characters must be real to me, and I must believe in it to be its creator.

Betty: How important do you believe having a good editor is for the success of your book?

Khanh: Having a savvy editor is like having a mentor who can shape your career as a writer. Jonathan Galassi, former editor in chief at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, once said, “An editor is like a shrink. A really good shrink doesn’t fix you; you fix yourself through the shrink.” A visionary editor doesn’t edit your manuscript only to twist it to his vision; instead, he shepherds your work to the promised land you have envisioned. He asks countless questions. By relentlessly pursuing the unasked questions buried ten feet deep in your manuscript and then unearthing them with answers to build one brick at a time until your Mayan Temple is constructed in all of its grandiosity you have imagined. One by one, they are answered to reveal multiple angles from a third dimension of your work never realized before. One by one, they are answered to deepen characterization whose richness becomes the fertile soil of your work, whose dynamics becomes plot itself.

But knowing what to ask is the difference. To ask the right questions is magic. The best editor knows how to ask questions.

But only a few can make a significant impact on your work.

Betty: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Khanh: No writer or author can inspire you to write. The writing desire must exist in you even before you are aware of it. It might demand to be heard before your maturity has arrived. But I believe that writers have influence on one another. Influence, not inspiration. Maybe someday what I wrote might bear some influence on some aspiring writers. But influences change with a writer’s age. For me there were two books I read at the age of nine: Pinocchio and The Count of Monte Cristo. I always trust my childhood memory, and for many years it hasn’t erased the vivid images from those books—of very real characters, of human nature, of human twists of fate. As a teen I read The Izu Dancer by Yasunari Kawabata, Rain by Somerset Maugham, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway. They haunt like a good long book. I read The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner and found myself envying him. All these have influenced me.

Betty: What book/s are you reading at present?

Khanh: I’m rereading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. I love characterization in a good book and always admire Greene’s versatility in handling various characters in his use of omniscient point of view. It’s the story of a Mexican Catholic priest troubled with alcohol and fear in his spiritual struggle to seek salvation and redemption.

Betty: If you could be somebody else for a day, who would you choose and why?

Khanh: That must be Jiddu Krisnamurti, the spiritual figure of the twentieth century, who mistrusted all religions and denounced the Eastern convention of deifying living spiritual masters. He spoke: “To free the mind from all conditioning, you must see the totality of it without thought.” And: “If you are free of fear then Heaven is with you.” Those are my two all-time favorite quotes from him.

Betty: What are you currently working on?

Khanh: It’s a novel about the siege of Dien Bien Phu, one of most talked-about battles of the Vietnam conflict against the French Union. The story is narrated through the voice of a sixteen-year-old mute girl whose inheritance from her estranged father is a lifetime of his artwork. From her father’s diary, artwork, she recreates the story of Dien Bien Phu through a visceral montage of stories that shows a colossal portrait of humanity in conflict. Nested in the narrative of this epic novel is a simple love story that transcends cultural barriers.

Betty: Thanks again for taking the time for this interview.

Khanh: And I thank you for having me.

Author Info

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh, The Demon Who Peddled Longing, and Mrs. Rossi’s Dream. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, and the Orison Anthology Award for Fiction. Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner. A Mother’s Tale & Other Stories has already won the C&R Press Fiction Prize.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha

~Giveaway~

This giveaway is for 3 print copies, 1 per winner, U.S. only and ends on November 24, 2021, 12 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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