A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe – 400 pages
ARC courtesy St. Martin’s in exchange for an honest review
Book Blurb:
On a humid afternoon in 1933, American Jessie Lesage steps off a boat from Paris and onto the shores of Vietnam. Accompanying her French husband Victor, an heir to the Michelin rubber fortune, she’s certain that their new life is full of promise, for while the rest of the world is sinking into economic depression, Indochine is gold for the Michelins. Jessie knows that their vast plantations near Saigon are the key to the family’s prosperity, and while they have been marred in scandal, she needs them to succeed for her husband’s sake—and to ensure that her trail of secrets stays hidden in the past. Jessie dives into the glamorous colonial world, where money is king and morals are brushed aside, and meets Marcelle de Fabry, a spellbinding French woman with a moneyed Indochinese lover, the silk tycoon Khoi Nguyen. Descending on Jessie’s world like a hurricane, Marcelle proves to be an exuberant guide to ex-pat life. But hidden beneath her vivacious exterior is a fierce desire to put the colony back in the hands of its people, starting with the Michelin plantations, fueled by a terrible wrong committed against her and Khoi’s loved ones in Paris. Yet it doesn’t take long for the sun-drenched days and champagne-soaked nights to catch up with Jessie. With an increasingly fractured mind, her affection for Indochine falters. And as a fiery political struggle builds around her, Jessie begins to wonder what’s real in a friendship that she suspects may be nothing but a house of cards.
My Review: 4 stars
A Hundred Suns swept me away to a part of the country I knew little about. Many of you know that historical fiction is my go-to genre and I’ve pretty much traveled around the world through these books. I believe this was the first book I read about Indochine. So much history about Paris, China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Once you google French Indochine, you’ll be glued to your computer for a while.
It was fascinating to learn about the Michelin rubber plants and horrifying to see the treatment of the workers. There was a lot of Michelin family drama; which I imagine was typical of most family businesses that make a fortune. The relationships between the characters were so close, that it was almost incestuous. They were all well-crafted. This book has so much inside its pages: postpartum depression, romance, travel, communism, colonialism, opium, history and all is never as you think it is. Highly recommend!
Quotes I liked:
Selective truths are worse than lies.”
“Sometimes we just need to feel nothing. Especially Americans. You’re a very high-strung people.”
“This is Indochine. Opium is part of the country’s soul, if you never look at it with smoke in your eyes, you’ll never see all of its layers.”
“Brains are more effective than beauty. Only the world tries to make women forget it. They don’t want us to be too smart.”
“There is a moment before you kiss a man where your life seems to standstill. You brain slows, they your heartbeat, which slows your pulse and relaxes your muscles. It’s a rare, physical quietude.”
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