The Frangipani Hotel

Starred review from December 16, 2013
In the stories in Kupersmith’s fiction debut, which are based on Vietnamese folktales, the modern and ancient collide, as do the real world and the spirit world. The stories are cast with a diverse assortment of characters, alive and dead. In “Reception,” set in the titular hotel in Hanoi, the front desk clerk, Phi, encounters an enigmatic woman whom he sets up on a fateful date with a visiting American businessman. In “Turning Back,” Phuong Nguyen, an aimless Vietnamese-American girl, finds a naked, elderly Vietnamese man behind the convenience store in Houston where she works as a clerk, and discovers to her horror that the man can (and does) take the form of a giant python. The collection’s least spirit-ridden story, “Guests,” features Mia, a young American woman who works at the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City; her job involves processing visa requests from people who claim to have been fathered by U.S. servicemen during the Vietnam War. The stories shimmer with life. The heat and tumult of Vietnam’s cities are palpable, and the awed wonderment of humans confronted with supernatural occurrences is artfully conveyed. These polished stories mark Kupersmith, who is in her early 20s, as one to watch.

February 1, 2014
In Kupersmith's debut collection, old men shape-shift into serpents, ghostly women lap at bath water, mute twins frighten their own father, a deathly ill man hungers to hear his driver's story, and all have a price to pay. The ghosts of Vietnam haunt the pages of this collection, and as characters tell each other tales, the act of storytelling becomes dangerous, for the past feeds upon the present. As the grandmother in "Boat Story" tells of a strange encounter during a storm, she questions whether one can ever escape the past, because escaping the storm must surely have come at a price. The best of these short stories, such as "Little Brother" and "The Red Veil," are indeed disturbing. Set in the titular Frangipani Hotel, "Reception" deftly mixes humor with horror. The narrator, Phi, runs the desk because his English is fairly good. Once owned by Phi's father and two uncles, the hotel now belongs only to his uncle Mr. Henry; Phi's father committed suicide a few years after Phi's other uncle drowned under mysterious circumstances. With his crazy ideas for boosting business (including a weird plastic fountain and mustard-yellow uniforms), Mr. Henry both exasperates and amuses his nephew. One day, however, Phi discovers a strange woman living in an officially unoccupied room. She exacts promises that set in motion a catastrophic collision between present and past, man and woman, America and Vietnam. Other tales are less successful, omitting links that would explain startling metamorphoses. In "Skin and Bones," for example, an overweight girl is sent to visit her grandmother. She knows full well it's really fat camp, and she's willing to tell her story to a masked woman in exchange for delicious sandwiches. Her story may come at a cost, but Kupersmith's tale leaves a lot of loose ends dangling. At her best, Kupersmith writes lyrically haunting tales; she's a writer to watch.

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March 1, 2014
Set in Vietnam and the U.S., these stories integrate the darker elements of Vietnamese folklore and myth. The nine pieces of short fiction feature a variety of characters who come from different economic and educational backgrounds and often spotlight relations among family members. In Reception, the slowly unfolding narrative encompasses the family running the Hotel Frangipani, an American businessman, and the beautiful manifestation of a local spirit. Internal tensions among characters propel narratives and create a suspenseful atmosphere. Guests features an American woman employed by the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, her Canadian lover, and the people, local and expatriate, who surround them. Readers get to decide the outcome of several of the stories. One with an ambiguous ending, Red Veil, begins in a Catholic convent, alternates between modern and historic Vietnam, and spotlights the tragedy of two sisters, a new stepmother, and the revenge of a human channel for the spirits of the dead. This first collection introduces a writer to watch and belongs in any library serving a short story readership.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2014

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. With an American father and a Vietnamese "former boat refugee" mother, the author channels her bicultural history to create contemporary, post-Vietnam War glimpses of reclamation and reinvention on both sides of East and West. In "Skin and Bones," two Houston sisters visit their Ho Chi Minh City grandmother "to rediscover their roots" but more realistically because "Vietnam Was Fat Camp." In "Guests," a pair of American expat lovers have diverging expectations. A dying youth tries to steal another's body in "Little Brother," and an insistent knock at the door demands retribution 40 years after the war in "One-Finger." In "Reception," set in the titular Frangipani Hotel, the clerk's family's past overlaps with the coming new brand of the ugly American. VERDICT The wunderkind moniker will soon enough be attached to the 1989-born Kupersmith, who wrote most of these stories as a Mt. Holyoke undergraduate. Her mature-beyond-her-years debut deserves equal shelf space with other spare, provocative collections, such as Paul Yoon's Once the Shore, Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds, and Yoko Ogawa's Revenge. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/13.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2013

Fresh out of Mt. Holyoke, Kupersmith draws on stories told by her Vietnamese grandmother to offer thematically linked pieces that illuminate the consequences of the Vietnam War. She hasn't even been published yet--she first appears this fall in the Massachusetts Review with "The Red Veil"--so the in-house excitement is noteworthy.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014

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. With an American father and a Vietnamese "former boat refugee" mother, the author channels her bicultural history to create contemporary, post-Vietnam War glimpses of reclamation and reinvention on both sides of East and West. In "Skin and Bones," two Houston sisters visit their Ho Chi Minh City grandmother "to rediscover their roots" but more realistically because "Vietnam Was Fat Camp." In "Guests," a pair of American expat lovers have diverging expectations. A dying youth tries to steal another's body in "Little Brother," and an insistent knock at the door demands retribution 40 years after the war in "One-Finger." In "Reception," set in the titular Frangipani Hotel, the clerk's family's past overlaps with the coming new brand of the ugly American. VERDICT The wunderkind moniker will soon enough be attached to the 1989-born Kupersmith, who wrote most of these stories as a Mt. Holyoke undergraduate. Her mature-beyond-her-years debut deserves equal shelf space with other spare, provocative collections, such as Paul Yoon's Once the Shore, Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds, and Yoko Ogawa's Revenge. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/13.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.