The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction
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- Synopsis
- An extraordinarily compelling debut--ghost stories that grapple with the legacy of the Vietnam War A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past. Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost--that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us. Violet Kupersmith's voice is an exciting addition to the landscape of American fiction. With tremendous depth and range, her stories transcend their genre to make a wholly original statement about the postwar experience. Praise for The Frangipani Hotel "In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories. . . . In perhaps the most pungent story here, a young woman who works the graveyard shift stocking shelves at Kwon's World Grocery in suburban Houston befriends an old man she finds standing naked beside a Dumpster. His problem: He occasionally turns into a fourteen-foot python. 'I am just a very old man who is sometimes a python,' the man tells the woman. 'But you, my child, are a creature far more complex.' One might suspect that Kupersmith, who is working on her first novel, is that creature."--Ben Dickinson, Elle"Violet Kupersmith has woven together culture, tradition, family, and ghosts to create a series of short stories that are as fresh as they are mesmerizing. These stories will haunt you long after the last words have drifted off the page."--Lisa See "Surgically precise and feverishly imaginative."--Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife "This first collection introduces a writer to watch and belongs in any library serving a short story readership."--Booklist"What is most haunting in Kupersmith's nine multilayered pieces are not the specters, whose tales are revealed as stories within stories, but the lingering loss and disconnect endured by the still living. . . . [A] mature-beyond-her-years debut."--Library Journal (starred review) "These polished stories mark Kupersmith, who is in her early twenties, as one to watch."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In this impressive debut, Violet Kupersmith displays a remarkable gift for voice and setting. Using history and horror, mystery and imagination, she has created this vivid collection of haunted and haunting stories."--Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book ClubFrom the Hardcover edition.
- Copyright:
- 2014
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 256 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780679645146
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780812993318
- Publisher:
- Random House Publishing Group
- Date of Addition:
- 05/03/21
- Copyrighted By:
- Violet Kupersmith
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Horror, Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.