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    Ru
    Ru
    Ru
    Ebook140 pages

    Ru

    By Kim Thúy

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    La palabra Ru, elegida por Kim Thúy como título de esta bellísima novela, significa "canción de cuna" en vietnamita, su lengua materna, y "arroyuelo" en francés, su lengua de adopción.
    Tomando la forma del caudal de un arroyo (leve, continuo), la narración navega, a través de pequeñas escenas, lúcidas y precisas, engarzadas como los eslabones de una cadena, por los recuerdos de la protagonista, desde una infancia de ensueño y privilegio en Saigón a la huida precipitada del país en una barcaza, el paso por un campo de refugiados en Malasia y el comienzo de una nueva vida de inmigrante, junto a su familia, en Canadá.
    Thúy recrea con gran delicadeza y luminosidad una historia que tardó treinta años en decidirse a escribir: la suya propia. Impelida por el deber de recordar, la novela no elude el relato de las dificultades a las que ha de enfrentarse un ser humano abocado a un proceso de reinvención impuesto por el exilio. Sin embargo, su punto de partida es la serenidad y la gratitud de quien, pese a todo, se siente en la obligación de ser feliz.
    "La obra de Thúy, tan atenta a su tradición y sus fantasmas, pertenece a esa otra tradición (…) cual es la del exiliado y el viajero. Esto implica, inevitablemente, grandes porciones de soledad, de dolor, de contenida desesperanza. Pero también, y esto pertenece al mismo género literario, amplias muestras de gratitud y de asombro ante la inquieta maravilla del mundo."
    Manuel Gregorio González
    LanguageEspañol
    PublisherEditorial Periférica
    Release dateMar 30, 2020
    ISBN9788418264023
    Ru
    Author

    Kim Thúy

    im Thúy has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. In 2010 Thúy won the Governor General's Award for French language fiction. She lives in Montreal, where she devotes herself to writing.

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    Reviews for Ru

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A novel that reads more like a memoir - of Vietnam immediately after the war, of flight and resettlement in Quebec,.
    • 5/5
      Life is a struggle in which sorrow leads to defeat. Originally published in French and winner of the 2010 Governor General Award for French language fiction, Ru is an ambitious autobiographical fictional debut novel that tells the story of Vietnamese refugee Nguyen An Tinh. A child of a prestigious Saigon family born during the Tet Offensive, the story is a first person narrative of a privileged world shattered by the Communist inspectors, escape to a Malaysian refugee camp, subsequent arrival in Quebec to an overwhelming foreign world of language and customs and life as an adult traveling back to Vietnam. Instead of following a traditional story-telling method, Thúy employs a vignette approach that allows the story to ebb and flow like a memory journey, each vignette connected to the previous by people, smells, sounds and scenes. Beautifully written and expertly translated into English by Shiela Fischman, Ru is as much an experience as a journey. The horrors of the Vietnam war, and the peace, resonates off the pages with meaning and we experience through our narrator the no man's land of not fitting into one's adopted country and no longer being recognizable as belonging to one's birth country: But the young waiter reminded me that I couldn't have everything, that I no longer had the right to declare I was Vietnamese because I no longer had their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears. And he was right to remind me. While it sounds like a story of struggle and loss, it is also a story about celebrating life. Beautifully written, I was surprised how quickly I was able to read this one and at the same time saddened to find myself at the end of the written journey held in my hands. Some may say the story tries to introduce too much in the mere 140 pages but I believe, in keeping with the vignette style of writing, that some topics can be just touched upon and left for the reader to explore further in their own mind.I was very happy to see the English translation of Ru has made the longlist for the 2012 Giller Prize. It is a story worthy of the three hours it took me to read it at an unhurried pace. A truly memorable read.
    • 5/5
      Best Canadian FictionUnique format may be a bit challenging to adapt to be this poetic novel weaves a tale that is memorable. Her writing immediately awakens images of faraway places.A must read.
    • 4/5
      This is quite a different approach to fiction. The chapters are only 1 - 2 pages long. The style is very poetic. The author recounts her life in Vietnam before she and her wealthy family flee the country as boat people. They end up in Montreal where they eke out a living as new immigrants.
    • 5/5
      I picked up this book because it was nominated as a Canada Reads finalist. It was an extremely quick read that grabbed you from the first page. Kim Thuy wrote a fictional book based upon her experiences of fleeing Viet Nam and settling in Canada. Some events were barely mentioned, but had great impact. This was a lyrical story that opened my eyes to the plight of the Vietnamese and the acceptance of Canadians for their relocation. I know it was probably not as simple as it seemed in this book, but it was a beautiful story.
    • 4/5
      Ru is a lyrical exploration of the experience of a Vietnamese girl who flees with her family to Malaysia, then Canada. She grows up, marries and has two children, and eventually returns to Vietnam. The narrator - a semi-portrait of the author - tells her stories in a series of short vignettes that move back and forth in time. The prose is crystalline and evocative - the central idea and strong images found in each vignette matter more than a linear plot. However, connections frequently appear - between the past and present, between disparate cultures, between strangers and friends and enemies. Because of the structure, sometimes it’s a bit hard to place characters and keep all the relationships straight but this contributes to the idea of everything being ephemeral, which occurs frequently throughout the book. - the family’s solid life in Vietnam is shattered and from then on their living conditions are temporary and strange. As the narrator grows up she sees everything in this light - possessions, lovers, her identity. Her relationship with her sons weighs her down for better or worse.
    • 3/5
      We often forget about the existence of all those women who carried Vietnam on their backs while their husbands and sons carried weapons on theirs. We forget them because under their cone-shaped hats they did not look up at the sky...Those women let their sadness grow in the chambers of their hearts. They were so weighed down by all of their grief that they couldn't pull themselves up, couldn't straighten their hunched backs, bowed under the weight of their sorrow. When the men emerged from the jungle and started to walk again along the earthen dikes around their rice fields, the women continued to bear the weight of Vietnam's audible history on their backs. Very often they passed away under that weight, in silence.This autobiographical work of fiction consists of short vignettes based on the author's experience growing up in South Vietnam, in a prosperous family that opposed the communists in the North and was forced to flee after the fall of Saigon in 1975. She and her family spent time in a squalid refugee camp in Malaysia before they were subsequently accepted into Quebec. Although their Québécois neighbors were welcoming and supportive of the new immigrants, the trauma of their past experiences and the immense cultural differences in moving to Canada left them bereft and adrift, particularly the older adults. In Ru, Thúy introduces the reader to numerous relatives of the narrator, each of whom has an interesting story to tell. Unfortunately, for this reader at least, the focus quickly shifted to a subsequent character at the time that I wanted to learn more about the first one. In reading this book I felt as if I was in a room with 25 related people, as I was accompanied by a rushed host who insisted that I meet everyone but spend no more than two minutes with each one, when I would have preferred to listen to two or three of them individually for an hour or two. As a result, Ru initially captured my attention, due to its evocative writing and compelling stories, but the frequent shifts from one character to the next made me lose my interest in them, and this book.
    • 3/5
      A novel written by a Vietnamese immigrant which expresses all of the sorrowful memories of a lost country, lost citizenship, lost family members and friends, but offers glimpses of kindnesses and new beginnings as the immigrant assimilates in a new country and culture. For those who have an acquaintance with the Vietnamese immigrant experience this book gives a window into the trials of the process of leaving one's native country, the horrendous camp experience for those who fled by boat and the inner conflicts as they start life over--many of which sadnesses the immigrant is reluctant to speak. The book is well-written with a dream-like, poetic quality as the author flows between past and present.
    • 4/5
      Written poetically, insightfully, and honestly. It's a choppy (chronologically speaking,) glimpse into the life of someone who's life was turned upside down by civil unrest and outside oppression and forced to emigrate. It's the story of a refugee, an immigrant, a traveller. Worth the read.
    • 4/5
      One issue with writers’ festivals is deciding whether to read a book before or after you hear the author speak. This was one instance where I was glad for the latter. I read Ru after Thuy’s packed-house presentation at the Sunshine Coast Writers Festival. Thuy gave a stirring account of her own family’s life in communist-controlled Saigon, their escape from Vietnam via boat, their time in a refugee camp in Malaysia, and adapting to their new home as immigrants in Quebec. Because I heard this story so vividly told in a linear format, each of the seemingly temporally random remembrances or vignettes in Ru fit beautifully into that storyline for me. Even though Ru is not a memoir, Thuy shares not only many of the experiences, but also many of the characteristics of the narrator, most notably, a predisposition to value memories over possessions. “Remembering only images that stay luminous behind my closed eyelids…. preferring them because I can shape them according to the colour of time.” (100)
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful novel, written in linked vignettes that suggest the various moments of the author's history and the themes that ties the various pieces. She writes at various points about growing up during the Vietnam War, coming by boat to Canada, and settling to raise her family, including a son with autism.
    • 4/5
      Ru by Kim Thuy is a compilation of vignettes where each page is a separate story, complete within itself, telling of the stress of living under the communists in Viet Nam, the horrors of escaping by boat, the filth and hopelessness of the refugee camp that they found themselves in, and the many adjustments they had to make as a family and as individuals to fit into their new life in Canada. This is not a linear story, but as the reader continues through the book, it’s beautiful, lyrical writing paints a clear picture of both this woman’s experiences and her inner feelings. There is a dream-like style to the writing and at times I felt like I was intruding on a very personal vision. Ru is a story about the emigrant experience and with it’s original perspective it was very easy to forget that this is a novel not a true memoir. It is also very easy to conclude that the author drew on her own experiences to create this very intimate account. I believe that this will be a book that stays with me, and that these small stories told with grace and dignity will often be recalled.
    • 4/5
      Kim Thuy was ten years old when she and her family emigrated out of Vietnam to Canada. They spent some time in a camp in Malaysia before boarding a boat to Canada. They ended up settling in Montreal. This book tells Kim's experiences in a series of very lyrical and descriptive little vignettes in this book. Ru's writing is very descriptive and there is a definite undercurrent of wit in the pages of this little book. And the journey isn't in a regular timeline. She slips back and forth from the remote past to the present to the recent past and back and forth. She transports us seamlessly and lyrically thus putting the reader into her different settings as we follow her and her family on this journey. This book was a finalist in the 2012 Giller Prize and it won the Governor General's Literary Award. I don't know if I've ever read prose quite like this. It seemed to put me in a dreamlike state as I read. It's a short novel that doesn't take much time to read, but packed with literary genius.
    • 4/5
      A story of a woman born into a wealthy family in Vietnam, who spent time in a Malaysian refugee camp and arrives as a "boat person" in Grandby, Quebec. The author tells this story through a series of vignettes which are beautiful and poetic (kudos to the translater, as well). This makes it challenging to fully understand the narrator, Nguyen An Tinh, and other characters are not really developed as well. But the writing kept me hooked an a portrait of a woman emerged by the end.
    • 3/5
      I found parts of this book very interesting, The format was to scattered for me to really enjoy.
    • 4/5
      This book doesn't feel like a novel, it reads like a memoir. And as I read about Kim Thuy's background I can see that most of what the central character experiences come from Kim Thuy's own history. Nevertheless it is beautifully written and really, I wanted more. I wanted to know more about how people felt about the circumstances they were in and I wanted to know more about the childhood in Vietnam. The references to returning to Vietnam in adulthood tantalized me and I wanted to learn more about that. We get glimpses of family members but I wanted full portraits. If Kim Thuy can take time from her busy schedule to write I think there is a great deal more she could add to this story. And I'll be reading it.
    • 2/5
      This is a short, poetic book about the author’s journey through life. She tells us about her childhood in Saigon, coming to Quebec with the boat people from Vietnam at ten years old, her family.

      At times I thoroughly enjoyed the way she made certain things come alive; for example “.. intensely craving a salad of green papaya with bird chilies that tore your mouth apart, that burned your lips, set fire to your heart.” p.121.

      I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 4/5
      This was a book of short connecting vignettes, all pertaining to Ru's life past and present. The detail in these stories and the wonderful prose kept me reading. The story goes back and forth, from Vietnam, to a Malaysian refuge camp and than on to Quebec. She comes to understand more things about her mother when she has children of her own. The war in Vietnam, to the struggle to acclimate in a foreign country and than her struggle with her autistic child are all related. In fact it is amazing how much we come to know about Ru and her family in thes3e short vignettes. The writing certainly deserves a 4, but this type of structure, plus the going back and forth did not allow me to form an emotional bind with any of the characters. I found out much information about them but the connection was not there. Will definitely read this novelists next novel because I do admire her prose.
    • 4/5
      Through a series of very short vignettes, some no longer than a single paragraph, Ru tells the story of Nguyên An Tinh, a Vietnamese girl from a well-off family whose life changes forever when South Vietrnam falls to the Communists. Jumping from Canada in winter, to a Malysian refugee camp, to an overcrowded and filthy boat in the South China Sea, to a privileged life in Saigon, before returning to Canada, this perhaps isn't the easiest book to follow but it is well worth persisting. But while I found the jumps in time and place didn't distract from my enjoyment of the book, I did find that the numbers of characters introduced in such a short book was a little overwhelming. Aunts and uncles and other relatives appear in great numbers but all became a little blurred after a time, meaning that it wasn't as easy to maintain interest in the other characters as it might have been. I would have liked more information about fewer people, particularly to have learnt more about Nguyên An Tinh's mother, a woman who before coming to Canada had never worked at anything other than organising her servants, but who in Canada willingly takes any job she can find to help her children get a start in life.This is another book about the experience of adapting to a foreign culture, and the misconceptions that can arise with even well-meaning interactions between locals and refugees. But overall you get a huge sense of gratitude towards Canada that I assume reflects Kim Thuy's own experience:The locals cosseted us one by one. The pupils in my grade school lined us to invite us home for lunch so that each of our noon hours was reserved by a family. And every time, we went back to school with nearly empty stomachs because we didn't know how to use a fork to eat rice that wasn't sticky. We didn't know how to tell them that this food was strange to us, that they really didn't have to go to every grocery store in search of the last box of Minute Rice. We could neither talk to nor understand them. but that wasn't the main thing. There was generosity and gratitude in every grain of the rice left on our plates.I didn't love this book as much as perhaps some others have done, but it is well worth reading, particularly in the current climate of anti-refugee rhetoric that pervades much of the media.
    • 4/5
      Wow. Beautiful.
      An elegiac and lyrical autobiographical novel of a family that fled Vietnam in the 1970s. They arrived in Canada, via Malaysian refugee camps, and eventually settled in Quebec.

      The story is prefaced with an explanation. "In French, 'ru' means a small stream and, figuratively, a flow, a discharge--of tears, of blood, of money. In Vietnamese, 'ru' means a lullably, to lull.

      The narrator was ten years old when 'the History of Vietnam' ended her "role as an extension of my mother." Her name was very similar to her mother's, because she was the sequel to her, she would continue her story. But the events changed their own planned futures and histories. She tells their story from her perspective thirty years later, as a Canadian immigrant who had to adapt to a new country, new languages, new customs. She had to learn how to accommodate these new layers of being-ness within her own identity.

      It is not a straight linear narration, but neither does it alway jump back and forth between discrete episodes of time. Instead she shares her memories as part of the flow of her present and past life. Woven throughout is an appreciation of the power and love of family, of ancestors and descendants.

      The tale occasionally started to stray toward the territory of sentimentality but fortunately veered away before arrival. It does not dwell or revel in horrors and atrocities. It is simple, yet elegant, and quietly inspiring.

      It won Canada's Governor General's Award for French-language fiction last year, and has since won other international awards.
    • 4/5
      How do you leave a country with only what you can carry on your body and make a new life in a new country using a new language? Through episodic memories that move back and forth through time, the narrator tells of her childhood in South Vietnam, of life in a reeducation camp, of a boat journey to a new land, of living in a refugee camp in Malaysia, of arriving in Canada and adjusting to a new culture and a new language, of returning to work in Vietnam years later, and of motherhood. Anyone old enough to remember images of the Vietnam War or the boat people will have no trouble visualizing what Thuy so movingly describes. It's short enough to read in a single sitting, and I think this factor is a key to its impact. Thuy pulls readers into her world and keeps them there just long enough to feel the weight of Vietnamese history before releasing them back to their own worlds.We often forget about the existence of all those women who carried Vietnam on their backs while their husbands and sons carried weapons on theirs...They were so weighed down by all their grief that they couldn't pull themselves up, couldn't straighten their hunched backs, bowed under the weight of their sorrow. When the men emerged from the jungle and started to walk again along the earthen dikes around their rice fields, the women continued to bear the weight of Vietnam's inaudible history on their backs. Very often they passed away under that weight, in silence.
    • 4/5
      Ru is a memoir about of a Vietnamese refugee who has escaped the war torn Vietnam with her family. Although this is a fictional autobiography, the events described in the book feel so real, so personal. You can't help but feel that many of these accounts are based on Kim Thúy's personal experiences. Each page in the book is a vignette, a memory that takes us from the young girl's extravagant life in Saigon, to a decrepit refugee camp in Malaysia and finally to a new unfamiliar world in Granby, Quebec. We also get a glimpse into her adult life where she has a family of her own raising two children, one of whom we are lead to believe is autistic bringing forward the challenges of motherhood and the realization of what love really is.Ru is beautifully written, almost lyrical. It puts the hardships of Vietnamese immigrants front and centre. We also get a sense of how communities in Canada, specifically Quebec, banded together to sponsor and support them as they transitioned into this new world.
    • 4/5
      This elegant little volume is called a novel, but it seems to me it belongs in a special category, with other poetic, uniquely structured narratives such as [Brown Girl Dreaming]. Its fiction contains, I'm sure, as much truth as a pure memoir and its power lies in the simplicity of the contrasts between sensual beauty and utter stinking ugliness. It is episodic, composed of vignettes, and time does not proceed in linear fashion. There is little continuity from one short section to the next (sometimes there is only one sentence on a page), but the overall picture of the life of one rather lucky Vietnamese refugee is startlingly clear. The cover blurb tells us that the title "ru" means "lullaby" in Vietnamese, and "stream" in the French of the narrator's adoptive home, Montreal. A very felicitous conjunction of meaning, and the perfect word to describe what goes on in this book. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Kim Thúy was ten when she fled Vietnam with her family in the wave of "boat people" fleeing the Communist reprisals after the fall of Saigon. After four months in a Malaysian refugee camp, her family was chosen for emigration to Canada based on her parent's French proficiency. They settled in Granby, Quebec (by chance the town my grandfather is from) and were warmly welcomed. Thúy attended the University of Montreal and then worked as an interpreter and translator for a Canadian firm based in Vietnam advising the Vietnamese government on their move toward capitalism. She later opened a restaurant in Montreal called Ru de Nam. Ru is her debut novel and highly autobiographical, referring to all the events above, as well as being the parent of an autistic child. The book won the Governor General’s Literary Award and the translation was a finalist for the Giller Prize.In addition to a mesmerizing story, what draws me to Thúy's books is her writing. It's like reading poetry. Almost every page is a new "chapter", usually only a paragraph or two, and ends with an impactful sentence. Although a complete thought in themselves, they string together flawlessly, creating a beautiful stream of thought moving back and forth in time. I get swept along and usually finish her book in a sitting or two. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      This is a story of a family of Vietnamese immigrants to Canada. After the Tet offensive the capitalist, elite families in South Vietnam were ostracised by the North Vietnamese Communists who took over the country. So these families left their own countries for greener pastures. This is a story of one such group of families who after a stint in a Malasian refugee camp land in Canada. The novel deals with the escape from Vietnam, the extreme cultural shock, the condescending attitude of the residents and other adjustment issues of these families. The author has a very abbreviated subtle style of writing. She puts forward so much emotion and thoughts in a half a page chapter. Truely brilliant. 

    Book preview

    Ru - Kim Thúy

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