Mãn

This book came to me at the right time. I've been in one of those ruts where I have a couple piles of books at home, holds checked out from the library, and while they're all books I want to have read none are books I really want to start reading. For some reason they're all too long or too heavy (figuratively) or too heavy (literally) or too dense or too flip. Then I picked up Mãn, and it was light and short, with tiny, vignette-like chapters and airy, poetic prose.

I liked the focus of this book, the main character Mãn, leaving Vietnam to settle in Montreal with her new husband, staying quiet and dutiful while slowly learning about boisterous and joyful affection from her new neighbors and family. Mãn fuses the quiet, subtle ways of loving she was used to, like her adoptive mother stroking her braid three times the same way Mãn does with her own children when they leave for school, with the everyday proclamations of love her neighbor and friend Julie gives to her husband and children. She celebrates fusion in her quiet way in her husband's restaurant, where she uses food to remember and help others remember their homes in Vietnam, the people and rituals and experiences they left behind, adding Vietnamese flavours to Quebecois dishes; she also hires a French pastry chef to add depth and difference to Vietnamese baking. Kim Thúy's writing is spare and beautiful; some other reviews have mentioned that they wish Mãn's relationship with her children had been fleshed out a bit more, and while I sort of agree, by the end of the book I left with the impression that Mãn loves her children very much. Part of her struggle is with methods of expressing love that differ between the culture she grew up in and the culture her children are growing up in.

Regardless of the story, and whether or not you like the choices that Mãn makes or that the author makes about what to focus on, this book is beautiful to read. Crisp and flowing, each short chapter is like a love poem.