She Weeps Each Time You're Born (Vintage Contemporaries)

I rarely write reviews. However, after finishing this book I was disappointed to see that it only averages 4 stars. So reluctantly I write this. Amazon reviews are funny things. It as though we are expected to review a book with the same system of criteria we would a pocket knife or a pack of crew socks. And perhaps many books fulfill such practical functions (to educate, to entertain, etc.) and should be judged as such. Did it fulfill its intended use? Would you recommend it? But perhaps some books transcend utility value. Those should be judged on their own merit like any other work of art. I believe this is one of those books. Quan Barry has done a remarkable job of transforming a sad and often gruesome history into something beautiful... even hopeful. In language often poetic but never pretentious she portrays the collisions between Light/Dark, East/West, Ancient/Modern, Communism/Capitalism, and yes, as promised in the description, between the living and the dead. Yes, it is different. Perhaps hard to follow at times. The narrative momentum is certainly different from many other more popular novels and is perhaps even experimental in nature but I did not find that it detracted from the story. Neither does the dramatic curve follow a conventional trajectory--the peak of the drama follows the reader's own heightened cultural understanding as much as it does any particular "action" in the novel. Yes, it is challenging. Yes it is sometimes hard to follow. But she offers clues from the very beginning about what the themes are and what to pay attention to. No, it is not summer beach reading. No, I would not recommend it to many of my friends. But there are some I would. I would not typically recommend listening to Bruckner either. That is no fault of Bruckner's. So, if you have any interest whatsoever in reading this book, (which you do, because you are reading reviews,) just buy it. Read it. And be glad such a work of art as this exists in the world.

A truly beautiful, so although terribly sad story. At times it was hard to follow because the story jumped around such that I think I missed some important parts, like why did Rabbit and her family leave Cambodia to return to Vietnam? I loved the details used, the description s of scents made me feel like I was right there. I will definitely recommend this book to others.

Reads, flows like a river, back and forth. Lyric, mysterious, harsh visions, sorrow and love. Back and forth, flowing through decades.

Viet Nam's Sorrow Quan Barry describes the Viet Nam war through the eyes of Rabbit who is knowledgeable beyond her years. She is able to speak to the dead and is instrumental in finding bodies lost in war. Her birth, and her life are unique. Barry shows the land of Viet Nam through legend as well as its natural beauty. I found the story very difficult to follow because of my lack of knowledge of the language and confusion of characters on my part.

Writing style is very unique- lyrical but sometimes hard to follow the story. Author weaves the facts with fantasy and folklore stories in the setting of post war Vietnam. It is a very unique approach to telling a story in and about this country.

this book is really like no other book I have read as well as giving a picture of the struggles of the folks in Vietnam it has a mystical tone which is wonderful

Quon Barry has written nothing less then a small masterpiece. She Weeps Each Time You Are Born is an ageless and singular tale about the life of Rabbit, born in a grave to a mother already dead 3 days. Vietnam, her homeland, one vast graveyard. From the moment she comes into the world in 1972, Rabbit is connected to those forever underground. She traverses the lands the dead haunt and where the living are haunted. She is blessed or cursed (depending upon one's point of view) with a preternatural connection to souls and to animals. The author's narrative is tidal in nature, with a Buddhist emphasis upon existence's circularity and impermanence. Time and life ebb and flow. Vietnam seems the cusp between The Physical World and The Spirit World as we move back and forth between French Indochina, the American war years and present day reunified Vietnam. The country and its people punished regardless of whom its master might be. Brief interludes of happiness like her parents' and her own for a Russian named Levka are transitory and evanescent. In the genre of magic realism, the author shifts seamlessly from the quotidian to the eternal and makes the impossible utterly believable. If Vietnam is the borderland between life and death, the physical and the spirit, then Rabbit is a sort of medium and docent. A Vietnamese Charon ferrying spirits across to the next existence but keeping their lives memory alive inside her. She is just one more orphan displaced by war and so much more. The quote below describes Rabbit aged three when told to say goodbye to her dying grandmother: "Rabbit rubbed her ears. The world went black like the moment before a curtain lifts. Gingerly she put her tiny hands on her grandmother's face.Through the fabric of the old woman's shirt she brushed the spot where Ba's scar gleamed next to her heart. A dog barked in the distance and then a flash and then everything. Ba's life spooling into her granddaughter in the span of a human kiss." Later she speaks her first words: her grandmother isn't dead. I believed her. Later you are told how the grandmother came to have the scar above her heart--it will make yours ache. It is one of many moments that plumb the depths of the reader's compassion. The ordinary people, anonymous combatants and defenseless bystanders in war are ennobled throughout this startling work. She illumines the unknown, introducing us to people we've never met but with whom we become intimately connected. It occurred to me midway that Rabbit is the author herself. Later it seemed more likely she is the tourist coming to Vietnam to uncover her own story. Regardless, Barry is proof positive a writer, a story teller embraces the vital task of telling painful and terrible tales. They do by suffusing themselves to imagine and summon those people's suffering of others. Perhaps Barry had no such notion when she began this book but she has accomplished the feat all the same. This is fiction at its finest telling stories that are individual and universal about a person and a people. A powerful and important book.

While difficult to get into and understand the story, persistance paid off. In the end it was a fascinating and magical book. Be patient in the beginning and you will be rewarded. Some beautiful writing.