Why a Booktrail?
1986, 2011: Part ghost story, part searing exploration of Vietnam’s colonial past
Build Your House Around My Body
What you need to know before your trail
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience.
2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.
The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands.
Travel Guide
Vietnam
A novel of two timelines and many threads of folklore and myth
The use of folklore in the book gives the book an eerie, otherworldly feeling. Take the first chapter which is set in a graveyard for example. There you will meet a malevolent being you will never forget.
The themes of this novel lend themselves well to a non-linear timeline. We go back and forth across timelines and characters which gives the novel a timeless and realistic atmosphere.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Build Your House Around My Body
Destination/location: Vietnam Author/Guide: Violet Kupersmith Departure Time: 1986, 2011
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