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“Set in late-nineteenth-century ancestor-worshipping Annam (later to become Viet Nam), Flesh tells the remarkable story of one boy’s quest to reunite his bandit father’s skull with his bones and bury them together in ‘a lucky hole.’ The horrifying opening scene of his father’s beheading is so realistic it made me feel I was in the crowd, watching. “The story continues with a fascinating journey laced with authentic details of a time and place that used to be, a world of geomancers, spirit dancers, river pirates and opium addicts, of simmering resentment toward converted Catholics, ancient cures like the dead eel rotting in a smallpox victim’s bed, a world where magical burial holes bring fortune to the dead one’s children. “Author Khanh Ha is particularly good with sounds and smells: from sweat and rain and incense and the smacking of dry lips, to the sounding of the village gong and spicy odor of beetles in the forest. “Anyone looking for a gripping adventure story combined with a painless history lesson is going to love this novel.”
“Good historical fiction allows a reader to enter another time and place. However, Khanh Ha’s Flesh goes further, not only creating a rich portrait of late nineteenth century northern Vietnam, but presenting a hero who is entirely a product of that world, violent and tender. His story is more than a period piece. It is grounded in his own loyalties, his desires, and his slow understanding of the secrets of the human heart. “I was particularly impressed by the voice of the narrator—and he really was a hero—and the way we learned about life then without being told, just by inhabiting his consciousness. The vivid descriptions of things, like the door in that courtyard that keeps appearing, keep coming back to me. I also loved that yellow monkey! But really, none of it could be real to me unless it was tied to that narrator.”
Vietnam-born Ha’s beautifully described [. . .] first novel, set in his native country at the turn of the 20th century, opens with an infamous yet respected bandit being beheaded in front of his wife and their two young sons. This beginning casts a pall over the tale as Tài, the eldest son, embarks on a far-reaching journey to retrieve his father’s skull, find a suitable burial site, and seek revenge on the man who betrayed his father’s trust. Through a series of twists and turns [. . .] Tài trades two years’ service to a wealthy entrepreneur for land on which to bury the father’s remains. During that time, Tài loses his heart to Xiaoli, an indentured servant working in an opium den, and will do anything—including holding off on vengeance and killing a French soldier—to protect her. In this dark, violent, and poetic saga, with disjointed cinematic vignettes that make it often read like a screenplay, characters are not who they seem. While this makes for a thrilling finale, what lingers [. . .] is Ha’s descriptive prose.
Flesh, a turn-of-the-20th-century debut novel set mostly in Hanoi, begins and ends with gruesome beheadings. Bearing witness to both executions is Tài, a poor teenage village boy quickly forced into manhood. In an effort to reclaim his father’s severed head and finance an auspicious burial, Tài spends the next year on an odyssey of discovery about his betrayed bandit father, their troubled family, and his own unsure self. Indentured to a geomancer who sells his contract to a wealthy Chinese merchant, Tài glimpses the backstreet Hanoi life of opium dens, desperate coolies, and the lawless rich . . . where his first experience of falling in love incites his own vengeful violence. Written in cowboyish twang filled with “yup,” “ain’t,” “em,” “gonna,” – possibly meant to simulate the vernacular of the day – the novel never quite loses its anachronistic feel. [. . .] but the fast-paced story pushes briskly to the finish. Readers who enjoy epic sagas set in faraway lands will find absorbing satisfaction here.
