Review of Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

*Banyan Moon* by Thao Thai (2023). Published by Mariner Books.

I had heard of Banyan Moon the same way I find out the vast majority of my books: through online book publications and influencers. Some influencers I follow have a tendency to get ARCs, and since I mainly follow Asian American influencers and diaspora literature sites, this book came onto my radar fairly quickly.

Because I was intrigued by the plot and story it said it was going to contain within its page, I ended up putting a hold on it way before it even came out at the library. I have no shame in waiting months for a book, that’s how dedicated I’ve become these days. I could’ve just requested an ARC myself, but I decided to wait because of how busy I was.

Then, when release day came, I got a notification from my library to come and pick the book up. I got it a couple of days later while on a grocery run, and read it over the course of a week. This wasn’t a novel I could fly through, which doesn’t mean it’s bad (taste is also majorly subjective when it comes to art), but it’s definitely something to savor slowly.

Here’s my review!

After the death of a grandmother (and mother), one family has to grapple with their shared past.

The events of Banyan Moon begin with the death of the family’s matriarch, Minh, who is Ann’s grandmother, and Huong’s mother. Ann and Minh were close, but Ann is not close with her own mother (Huong), which has led to some tension throughout the years.

Ann has also moved away to be away from them, but as we see from the event she’s attending at the beginning of the book, she’s not quite fitting into the world her fiancé lives inside either. He’s a rich white man with a family that one would expect coming from this kind of background, and that doesn’t help Huong.

She’s also coming to the realization that he cheated, but as he begs for her come back to him, she gets the call that her grandmother is dead. We’ll also find out later that she’s pregnant with his baby, but that’s going to go on the back burner after the events to come.

Ann flies home to Florida, where she now has to grieve her dead grandmother and reconcile with her mother, who is also jealous of the fact that Minh and Ann were closer. We also come to learn pretty quickly that the house was left to them, which pisses off Huong’s brother.

Ann starts to get involved with a childhood friend slash beau from high school while also coming to terms that her relationship she quite literally fled is going to come to an end. Then there’s the fact she’s pregnant.

The novel, after the point in which we establish the core details, begins to switch from the three women’s perspectives to give a holistic picture of what’s going on here. Minh’s story is one of hardship and eventual tragedy, as the driving force that got her to the United States was the death of her husband and then the Vietnam War.

More of this comes to light when Ann goes through the attic and finds some of Minh’s personal belongings, and the family in the present day are uncovering the secrets of their origin story and how Minh hid away parts of herself.

Suddenly the woman they thought they knew had a much different backstory, one she often didn’t refer to as she was raising her kids in the United States as a single mother. I think Thai’s decision to break up the narrative into the three women’s stories really is a good one for this kind of story, as we come to realize what happened to Minh, who became pregnant for a man who didn’t do anything for her, and how her husband actually helped her out so much.

It also shows how her granddaughter and daughter are also kind of following in her footsteps, as they struggle with men.

Kind of a generational trauma and ripple effect happening here because of the events, which means we’re really seeing the repercussions of something that happened decades ago in real time.

I won’t give the direct ending away in this post, but I think it’s very fitting for this novel—a symbol of a completely new start, the tethers of the past now gone in a physical way.

Overall Thoughts

I’d definitely say I enjoyed this novel. The narrative that interested me the most was Minh’s, and, to be honest, I would’ve read an entire book on her perspective and then her ghost simply watching down on her kin trying to survive without her.

I wouldn’t say I was completely in love with it and its narrative, but I thought the writing was pretty good and that Thai is a great storyteller. There are some parts and characters I didn’t care for, and I will admit that Ann and Huong weren’t the characters that I was feeling very positive about.

Ann was kind of reminding me of my older sister, and that’s not a good comparison here at times—these two lowkey just needed family therapy, and this was a roundabout way of getting there. But I still had fun reading this!

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