Truly an incredible debut! So beautifully layered and almost hypnotic in its maze-like structure. Haunting and disturbing yet rich and moving and funny too. It perfectly combines elements from different genres (epic, horror, mystery, magical realism, folklore, historical fiction) to marvellously and masterfully weave together an exceptionally suspenseful and exciting story, one that will stay with me for a long time.

Hmmm...I found this book to be a bit confusing and a slow-burner. The storyline was promising but I think there was too much going on for me to really enjoy to book and get to know the characters.
Thank you to Violet Kupersmith, NetGalley and Oneworld Publications for the opportunity to read and review this book.

An impressive debut and a dark, feminist literary thriller on the interconnected destinies of two women that disappear decades apart in Vietnam.
The novel starts with the disappearance of Winnie, a Vietnamese American who has gone to teach English in Vietnam as a means of finding herself. We already see that something is wrong when her boyfriend shows some guilty complacency at her disappearance and decides not to report it. This is the start of a gripping tentacular narrative unfolds in multiple narrative threads. The novel is very complex and intricate and invites the reader to play detective, taking in all cues and not giving anything for granted as characters disappear and re-emerge later on. Potentially frustrating and baffling if you do not pay enough attention.
This is a dark, inventive feminist tale that comments with vehemence on the legacy of colonialism, which goes hand in hand with oppression of women, i.e. colonising the country, the minds, the bodies. It makes wonderful use elements of Vietnamese traditions and folklore along with (less wonderful in my taste) elements of pure horror, such as possessions, ghosts and exorcisms. While they are spooky enough if you dislike horror scenes, these are always functional to the narrative and they are also infused with black humour (the exorcist and his aides are really funny and the name says it all: Saigon Spirit Eradication Company). Grotesque elements abound, too. The picture of Vietnam is masterful and vivid, for example in the ominous heaviness and the humidity of the haunted forests, and oppressive atmospheres of the decadent mansions.
For lovers of horror, magical realism, postcolonial novels and feminist tales. Well done! I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

I am grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ambitious, decades-spanning tale that packs a lot into its 400-plus pages. Too much, perhaps, at times with lengthy digressions and long descriptions of minor characters and incidents that do, however, all work to create an incredibly complex picture of Vietnam and the world Kupersmith is building, and allow the many clever links in the plot to hide in plain view. Evocative and mesmerising.

I enjoyed the writing and the mystery was starting to get interested, but something about this novel was difficult for me to fully get invested in. Perhaps it was the fact that I made it 40% into this book and still felt like I knew nothing about the main character. If you like slow-burn plots with hidden clues and a rich history, I would recommend this one! It just wasn't for me.

In 1986 the daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation as she flees from her father. She is never the same again as her ordeal changes her forever.

Twenty-five years later Winnie who is American-Vietnamese, decides to move to Vietnam to live with her aunt and teach English at a language centre. She is a miserable lonely young woman who prefers to be invisible as she feels she doesn’t belong anywhere; she eventually gets her wish as she does end up disappearing without a trace.

There is a connection between the two, as their fates are tied together by ghosts, possessed bodies and family history.

I was so excited to start this book as I love a good creepy ghost story, however, I found it a struggle. It is utterly bizarre, although the crazy hauntings and ghoulish parts were interesting and at times gruesome as Violet's descriptive language brought vivid imaginings. What I struggled with was the dislike of Winnie, well, all the characters. There wasn’t anyone likeable and this made me feel distant and unconnected. I should have felt pity for Winnie but she didn’t deserve any, she didn’t deserve to be cared for. As the story is written jumping from between different timelines and threads, all the chapters with Winnie felt exasperatingly long, just unnecessarily dragged out to the point I skimmed a few parts and that is something I rarely do. Sadly, this just wasn’t for me.

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.

1986 - The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed.

2011 - A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands.

Build Your House Around My Body has moments of wonderful unpredictability. Framed around a present-day disappearance, it weaves together a tapestry of enriching, supernatural, Vietnamese stories. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

A strange book with a very confusing timeline. I was interested in Vietnam and the superstitions held, but nothing prepared me quite for this! The story centres around Winnie, a US-Vietnamese young woman who seems to be totally depressed, with no self-esteem and with a personality disorder - it's very hard to warm to her. Also the story of Binh and two brothers, a friendship dating back 30 years previously. All the 'shape-shifting' and ghosty stuff isn't my usual reading choice, but hey we can all try something different, and the writing was enjoyable. But the characters and different timelines changed so quickly I found it hard to make the connections and relationships between the eras and people.. So much so that at the end I had trouble remembering who the last-featured people were! Having said that, I read to the end because I loved the writing, the dark humour, the descriptions, the 'colour' descriptions and I will look out for this author again.

Mesmerising.
A stunning novel that is rather difficult to describe. Evocative, disturbing, downright weird but completely addictive. The sights, smells, history and superstitions of Vietnam over the decades drew me in, even when I was initially quite confused about the plot. I just had to read more, and by the time the threads and characters began to weave together, I was addicted. I have just finished it and am still slightly bewildered, but in the best possible way as I can't stop thinking about it! You just have to read it. Thanks to the publishers for an advanced digital copy, I can't wait to see the finished product, the cover looks suitably beautiful.

As much as I wanted to like Build Your House Around My Body, it left me feeling rather underwhelmed. The narrative seems very much intent—hellbent even—on nauseating its readers, at times adopting a playful tone to do so. Ultimately, the story's relentless efforts to be as abject as possible succeeded only in making me feel nothing for the characters.

The novel's first few chapters were intriguing in a Neil Gaiman kind of way but with each chapter this reminded me more and more of Mariana Enríquez (not my cup of tea).
Build Your House Around My Body takes place in Vietnam, shifting between a cast of interconnected characters, and moving from the 1940s to the early 2010s. In 2011 a Vietnamese American woman named Winnie living in Siagon goes missing, less than a year after arriving in Vietnam. Over the course of the novel, we learn of what led her to Siagon and of her stint as an English teacher. A section of the narrative follows the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co. who are called to investigate some 'spooky' ongoings at a farm in North Vietnam, another introduces us to a Vietnamese French boy sent to a boarding school during colonial rule, and then there are chapters focusing on three childhood friends, Binh, a supposedly feisty young girl and two brothers, Tan and Long, who share the same kind of bland personality.
The setting is vividly rendered, that's for sure. We feel the oppressive heat and humidity experienced by the characters and the author has a knack for bringing to life the environments in which her characters are (be it a cemetery, a forest, or a dingy bathroom). The various storylines however don't really flow that well together. The author wastes too much time poking fun at secondary characters that she loses sight of her novel's central figures. Take Winnie. She remains a half-formed character, and while some of her vagueness may be intentional she could have still been fleshed out more. But her chapters often detail the silly routines of her colleagues or try really hard to gross you out through unpleasant descriptions of bodily fluids. Each storyline seems punctuated by slime, sweat, and shit. Which...yeah. The supposed revenge storyline doesn't really come into play until the very end of the novel and by the end, it was glaringly obvious what had taken place in the past. The only section that made me feel somewhat amused was the one featuring the Fortune Teller's First Assistant, but she was at beat a minor character (more of a cameo appearance really).
I had the distinct impression that this it the type of novel that is confusing for the sake of being confusing and I never much cared for these types of stories. Not only did the characters feel flat but I felt at a remove from them. The narrative spends so much time ridiculing them or comparing their facial features or appendages to foods/animals that I never saw them as 'real'.
To be perfectly honest I don't think I entirely understood what this book was going for. As I said already the novel's raison d'être seems to be that of repulsing the readers. The issues the narrative attempts to touch upon—female agency? maybe? I don't really have a clue—are lost in a murky melange of disparate storylines that don't really come together that well nor do they succeed in bringing the characters or their struggles to life. While the setting was rendered in startlingly detail. the characters—their experiences and their relationships to one another—remain painfully vague.

Wow.
I don't think I have the words to describe how this novel made me feel. And I mean that in a good way!

I think that what I expected and what I got from this book are two very different things and that may be why I came away dissatisfied . I was very interested in reading about Vietnam and learning about the French occupation there. Winnie seemed like she would be an interesting protagonist, caught between two cultures. I often found myself confused (even now I don't know the meaning behind the smoke monster) and the pacing for me didn't help at all, feeling like quite the slow burn throughout which just doesn't seem to add up when the author is also writing horror. Having never visited Vietnam I can't comment beyond my own feeling that the remarks on native cuisine seemed regressive, which was also disappointing.

Rounding up to three stars


I can only assume I missed something in this book,as other reviewers loved it,and those reviews were what kept me reading,when I was a quarter of the way through the book and not much idea what was going on.
As the threads drew together,and I got a better understanding,I realised I just wasn't that drawn in/interested.
Didn't hit the mark for me,as interesting as some of the parts were.

It’s difficult to know where to start when writing about this book. Perhaps I’ll start by saying I misread the NetGalley description and it isn’t what I expected (although how and why I did this is a mystery because it’s quite clear). It’s also not what I would normally read (it’s full of snakes and ghosts and possessions and, well, lots of other stuff like that). However, it seems that this turns out to be a good thing because I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I could also start by saying that I am on record several times as saying I prefer atmosphere to plot in a novel. And this novel is really all about plot. But that doesn’t seem to matter here. The chapters come at you in non-chronological order and I quickly realised I was going to have to take notes if I wanted to keep any kind of track of what was happening. But then, as the plot thickened, I came to realise that my notes would need to be effectively the same length as the book because there isn’t really a wasted word here.

Finally (I think), I could start by saying that I’ve read a couple of books already this year that have reminded me of the years I spent watching the TV series “Lost”. And this becomes a third example. For one thing, it has a smoke monster! But what it also has is multiple layers of connections: the structure of the book, its jumping from one time to another, is very carefully put together to lead the reader through and keep giving moments where pennies drop and connections are made. In this sense, the book reminded me of reading Emily St John Mandel who is a master of jumping around in time gradually revealing a story. I think it’s probably this that makes the book such a lot of fun to read. And it’s the reason why this review won’t talk about plot at all. Well, one of the reasons: another reason might be that I got a bit confused (in a good way)!

Winnie is American/Vietnamese. We meet her arriving in Saigon. Don’t worry, the rustling in the bushes will be explained later in the book. But this rustling is the first indication that this is going to be a book where things are explained many pages after (or before) they happen in the book. My notes from the book are full of comments about what an event might mean for who a person is and how they are connected to other people. Winnie is fleeing her life in America and seeking a new version of herself in Saigon. She takes a job as an English teacher but, as she can’t really speak Vietnamese and, also, isn’t really interested, it doesn’t go terribly well. As she starts to explore the city, we find ourselves plunging into a weird world of snake symbolism, magical realism and possession.

It’s really not the kind of stuff I would normally read. But it really is a lot of fun!

Alongside this story of the supernatural (cue the smoke monster, but I think I already mentioned that), we read about Vietnamese folklore and the influence/legacy of French colonisation. Somehow, this bizarre mixture works really well.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.