Book Review: Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

 

My Rating: 4.5⭐️(rounded up)

“Knowledge allows remembering, and remembering is honoring.”

In an effort to flee post-war –Vietnam in search of a new life, a family decides to flee to the United States, where they have family waiting for them. Sixteen-year-old Anh, ten-year-old Thanh and Minh thirteen at the time, are the first to embark on this perilous journey, with their parents and remaining siblings to follow. In a tragic turn of events, their parents and younger siblings do not survive the first leg of the journey. Anh and her brothers are rejected for asylum in the United States and eventually are admitted into the United Kingdom – a journey that takes two years and stretches at refugee camps in Hong Kong and finally in the UK, where they await resettlement. We go on to follow Anh, now responsible for her younger brothers as she and her siblings process their losses, cope with the trauma they have witnessed and endured and strive to adjust to life in their adopted country.

The narrative is presented to us in three threads. The first is the story of Anh and her two siblings, presented in the third person narrative format predominantly from Anh’s perspective that follows their story from 1978 to the present day. The second thread is the first-person narrative of Dao, one of their younger brothers who did not survive the journey along with their parents, floating in the afterlife and keeping watch over his three surviving siblings. The third thread is that of a writer (whose identity is revealed later on in the narrative) in the present day who is drafting a story based on Anh’s experiences, documenting her research. The threads do come across as a tad disjointed and it took a while to get used to the abrupt change in voice especially when the writer’s thread is presented to us.

“I am trying to carve out a story between the macabre and the fairy tale, so that a glimmer of truth can appear.”

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin is a beautifully written, well-researched, insightful and thought-provoking story. The story touches upon themes of immigration, the refugee crisis, grief, loss, survivor's guilt, generational trauma and healing. While the story sheds a light on the perilous journey of Vietnamese boat refugees and refugees and immigrants all around the world who are compelled to embark on dangerous journeys seeking sanctuary, the author also sheds a light on generational trauma and how grief casts a shadow on the lives of those who are both, directly and indirectly, affected by a loss. I can’t help pondering over the significance of the title of this novel. The novel references Operation Wandering Soul - a psychological warfare campaign exercised by US troops during the Vietnam War that revolved around the Vietnamese belief that their dead must be given a proper burial in their hometown, failing which their souls would aimlessly wander the earth. We also meet a wandering soul, Dao, Anh’s younger sibling. The term "wandering souls" also signifies the sense of displacement and loss that refugees struggle with in their search for a sense of home and belongingness in their adopted country. The author references several horrific real events such as the rape and torture of Vietnamese refugees by Thai fishermen on the Thai island of Koh Kra in 1979 and the Essex Lorry Deaths of 2019 while also giving us a glimpse into the immigration policies and politics in the UK during that period. Overall, this is an incredibly moving and impactful read and a stunning debut. I can’t wait to read more from this talented new author.

I paired my reading with excellent audio narration by Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook and Ainsleigh Barber that brought these characters and this story to life.

“We fill in the gaps. We find stories in every little moment and gather them up readily. We imagine that the unknown isn’t the worst scenario and we try to make sense of the senseless. We look for the silver linings and the whys and what- ifs and what- should- have- beens. We try to solve the puzzle, pieces scattered through time and space and the deepest corners of our memories. And what better way is there of doing that, what better way is there of processing our past, than by rewriting it?”