Book Review: My Mother, The Mermaid Chaser By Jamie Jo Hoang

The next September book on our radar comes from an author we first found through her book, My Father, the Panda Killer. With a jaw-dropping title like that, it’s no wonder we had to check out the audiobook version. Jamie Jo Hoang has now released the companion novel to that book, called My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser.

My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser follows Paul and his mother Ngọc Lan, the other half of the Vũ family in My Father, the Panda Killer. On his summer trip to Vietnam, Paul discovers more about his mother and her life during the Vietnam War and leading up to when she abandoned him and his family.

With haunting tales and ghostly appearances, we’d say this coming-of-age novel fits right into our spooky seasonal reads. Here are three things we enjoyed most about reading My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser!

Book Overview: My Mother, The Mermaid Chaser

Content warnings: death of a loved one, bodies, corpses, warfare, violence, rape, sexual assault, abusive relationship, child abuse, domestic violence, parental abandonment, prostitution, weapons (Please read at your discretion!)

Summary: San Jose, 2008: Paul yearns to know more about the mother who abandoned his family, but she is the only topic no one discusses. Now he’s in Vietnam, feeling displaced and considered an outsider. Plus, a ghost is haunting him even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts. His cousin and the grandmother he’s never met before now keep telling him that he’ll get answers only if he’s willing to open his ears.

Vũng Tâu, 1975: Ngọc Lan is eleven when her family breaks apart: her brother is drafted into the army; her father leaves on the last helicopter to the US. She and her sister are sent from Vietnam on a harrowing journey by boat. Only Ngọc Lan will survive. But what is the American dream when you are haunted by the death of your sister, missing your homeland; seeing ghostly mermaid sightings; lost in an abusive marriage; struggling as a parent?

Told in the alternating perspectives of Paul and Ngọc Lan, My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser is a haunting story about the intergenerational effects of war, estranged family bonds, and how a teenager discovers a new connection to a lost part of himself.

Real, Raw Storytelling

Ngọc Lan’s perspective in My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser shares detailed descriptions of the Vietnam War and the aftermath of living as a refugee. We expected very sensitive topics to be discussed, and the reality was so much more horrific. But by reading these stories and learning about the past, it makes the subject less taboo. For Paul, everyone avoided the topic of his mother at all costs. No one wanted him to relive the trauma of being abandoned. Once he eventually sat down and listened to Ngọc Lan’s story, it didn’t erase or invalidate his anger from all these years. Instead, it brought a new perspective that he would carry with him in mending his and his sister Jane’s relationship with their mother moving forward.

Vietnamese Spirituality

Vietnamese people are superstitious. They believe in ghosts, possession, divine prophecies, talismans, lucky and unlucky numbers, all of it. My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser incorporates this ardent spirituality so well. There’s a recurring theme that water can connect you to all your ancestors. The ghost of Paul’s late aunt Dì Diễm haunts him, but not in a menacing or destructive way. She protects him from other spirits. And she only wants to be brought home to Vietnam. On the other hand, Ngọc Lan yearns to connect with Dì Diễm’s ghost, unable to let go of her sister even decades after her death. The conclusion following her acceptance and the closure they both get at the beach speaks to us on another level.

The Use Of Honorifics

Another thing we enjoyed about My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser is the author’s consistent use and explanation of honorifics in Vietnamese. It takes a lot of consideration and deference when it comes to addressing a person. You have to think about their relationship to your family, as well as their age relative to your parents and grandparents. But the age factor can get overruled depending on their parent or grandparent’s order in the family. If you’re unsure, there are a couple default honorifics that are polite enough to get away with until they correct you. A lot of times, people will refer to themselves using certain titles rather than simply saying “I” or their names, which we also see in this book.

My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser by Jamie Jo Hoang comes out September 23rd, and you can order a copy of it here!

Did you enjoy Jamie Jo Hoang’s new companion novel, My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

Want to hear some of our audiobook recommendations? Here’s the latest!

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