From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: Guest Review and Excerpt of HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

Author: Khanh Ha
Publisher: Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)
Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024
ISBN: 978-1940724454
Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages

If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering. Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.
Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.
Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.

HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.

Guest Review by Gud Reader :

Her: The Flame Tree- Book Review

Not very often does one get to read a masterfully woven piece melding some good old tradition, family matters, sacrifice, loyalty, and some redeeming love. However, Khanh Ha does exactly that in this brilliant masterpiece ‘Her: The Flame Tree.’

Reporter and graduate student Minh Tanh has a mission to find an adopted daughter of an elderly imperial eunuch who had served the emperor in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century. Upon meeting Phoung Bo who is now aged and living a simple rural life Tanh is now curious to know her story. Born when Vietnam is under the French Phuong Bo is half French and half Vietnamese and lacks any knowledge of her family’s history. Later she is adopted by Bo who serves as the grand eunuch for the powerful emperor and who has a good liking for one of the aging Emperor’s concubines something which leads him to some forbidden romance. More mystery arises when a young Phuong is met by Jonathan Edwards an American who is in search of her dead lover’s family who also happens to be of Vietnamese and French origin and who possesses a phoenix necklace identical to the one Phuong has. How will events unfold in this interwoven matrix?

Ha does a marvelous job in this stunningly inventive and deeply moving fiction with complete characters while bringing that creative atmosphere blending different timelines thus taking the reader to various events in this lush and beautiful country’s history while appreciating the country’s political and social structure changes over the centuries. This piece deserving my five-stars!!

Enjoy this excerpt:

EXCERPT

(HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha)

The summer heat often drove her and her father outside onto the steps of their house, where they’d sit sharing a bowl of rice. One such evening, when she was four, the air filled with the sawing of many locust wings. The sky was dark and bloated as the insects swarmed through the village. People ran out of their houses, some still holding rice bowls, some with toothpicks stuck in their teeth, some carrying todders astride their hips, all watching the sky. Phượng hid in the house, frightened by the sounds of their wings.

Night fell and the locusts still buzzed. They crashed against the window shutters like pebbles thrown by a boy, one after another. She couldn’t sleep. Her father soothed her as the locusts detonated against the house.

That night she dreamed of a little girl standing by their pond. Drenched, she stood, looking at Phượng. The girl’s eyes were beautiful in their tranquility. Long, curly lashes shading them. When Phượng woke, it was dawn.The air was quiet. She thought of the locusts, relieved they were finally gone, then thought of her dream. It shook her―it was so real.

She opened the door and went to the lotus pond with the girl’s face still fresh in her mind. She stood in the exact spot where the girl had been, where old green moss coated the rim of the pond. In her pajamas, with dreams still clouding her eyes, she waited for something nameless. When she turned to look down into the pond, her foot slid on the moss and she splashed into the water and sank.

All she saw then was her father, bright amid a long dark tunnel of water that made no sound. Breathless, she sensed that she had lost him forever. Just as everything collapsed in a black shroud, she felt a hand grab her.

After her father dried her, he sat her down and looked into her eyes, frowning.

“Phượng,” he said soothingly, “what were you doing by the pond at this hour?”

“I wanted to see the girl.”

“Little one, I didn’t see anyone out there.”

“I was scared last night. The girl came to be with me.” Phượng glanced toward the pond. “She left to go to the water.”

Her father nodded. “You saw her by the pond?”

“Yes.”

“What did the little girl look like?”

Phượng pointed at her chest. “Like me. But it’s not me. She’s someone else.”

He held her hands in his. “Dear, you were dreaming.”

“I wasn’t dreaming, father. I saw her.”

He leaned down and touched his forehead to hers. “Don’t ever go to the pond, unless I’m there with you.”

About Khanh Ha

Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
Blog: http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha

Giveaway- HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

This giveaway is for 2 print or ebook copies print is open to the U.S. only. Ebook is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on Feb 23, 2024 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway