A powerful and emotional story of family, identity and generational trauma

Summer Rolls is a deeply moving and multi-layered family story that explores themes like displacement, cultural identity and the silent trauma passed down through generations. Right from the start, the novel draws you in: a pregnant mother in 1970s Vietnam sends her young son away on a boat, hoping for a better future for him. The scene is emotional and intense, you can feel her fear, her hope and her strength in a time when hope was hard to hold onto.

Later we follow Mai and her mother Trinh in 1980s London. Mai feels torn between two worlds, alien in her surroundings, constantly judged. By her mother, her community and herself. Her thoughts, insecurities and quiet rebellion are portrayed with sensitivity and authenticity. The relationship with her mother is complicated and often harsh, but through the alternating perspectives we begin to understand Trinh too. What first seems like cold discipline turns out to be the result of unspoken, unresolved trauma of her own.

The writing style is smooth, immersive and emotionally engaging. The use of different perspectives adds depth, allowing us to experience both mother and daughter in their respective realities. It builds a strong understanding of cultural conflict, the expectations placed on women, and the quiet ache of not fully belonging.

I especially appreciated how the author included Vietnamese phrases throughout the dialogue. They’re used sparingly and with care, adding authenticity and cultural texture without making the reader feel lost, the meaning always comes through in the responses or surrounding context.

Summer Rolls is a story about how life can be transformed by the loss of a homeland. It’s about the struggle for belonging, the silence between generations and the difficulty of breaking away from inherited patterns.

A touching and beautifully written novel that lingers in your thoughts, honest, emotional and told with clarity and heart.

Mai is navigating second-generation immigrant life in 1990s London, with yet another of those harsh mums who expects her to behave and do her best for the family. She meets a kind boy as she tries to fit in, but she can never take him home, and what good is wanting to be a photographer as a career when there's family entrepreneurial stuff to do? Mum Trinh was young and rebellious once, too, but also had some really hard times through the conflicts in Vietnam - I was actually torn between being glad these experiences are honoured and worrying about people being traumatised revisiting their history, although it is quite clear that there are dual narratives in the book.

Trinh has to cope with first migrating across her own country, then sending her son away to goodness knows what, then coming to London herself, so it's no wonder she's the tough centre of the household while her husband is plagued by PTSD from being in the army. Once again, although we are invited to respect and support Trinh, I felt more on her side than her pretty ungrateful daughter - is this because I'm older now and can see what these women in these books (and the real-life ones they're based on) have been through more clearly?

I really liked that there was lots of Vietnamese language which wasn't translated but was cleverly worked into the text so you understood what it meant, as well as having a basic family member vocab at the beginning. A very decent first novel with interesting things to learn.

Blog review on 17 April: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/two-east-asian-second-generation-immigrant-stories-tuyen-do-summer-rolls-and-candice-chung-chinese-parents-dont-say-they-love-you/

Summer Rolls is a novel about family and cultures, as a British-Vietnamese girl battles with her mother who left Vietnam for her children. Mai lives in London and as a teenager in the 90s, she feels that she isn't allowed the same freedom as everyone else in her class, with her mother's strict rules and idolisation of her older brother who just graduated from university. But her mother, Trinh, hasn't had a simple life, and secrets from the past resurface as they try to find a way to understand each other.

This novel is told in two parallel narratives, one in the 90s and early 2000s in London and the other in Vietnam over two decades, unfolding the stories of Mai and Trinh and what freedom, love, and family have meant to them. The style really draws you in, immediate and with enough untranslated Vietnamese in dialogue to get across the importance of culture and language in the novel. The blurb compares the book to Pachinko, but it is much less epic in scope than that novel, and more focused on two main characters and those close to them.

I enjoyed Summer Rolls and its powerful exploration of a mother-daughter relationship caught across countries and time. I do think the UK cover does the book a bit of a disservice, looking more like a YA novel or something without the depth of Summer Rolls, but it is nice artwork.

"Summer Rolls" is a challenging read, but an important one.

Tuyen Do, inviting perspectives of two women, mother and daughter of Vietnamese heritage, explores a variety of heavy-hitting subjects. From norms around child rearing, the marks that the unease of war and political unease leave on individuals, dynamics of immigrant communities to being a first-generation British-Vietnamese and experiencing the clash of cultures between what's going on at home and outside of it.

I truly appreciated the ambiguity of "Summer Rolls". On one hand, the pages of this story are filled with sometimes shocking, sometimes plain incomprehensible actions, and yet they're quite easy to understand, once you connect the dots. I also appreciated the editorial decision of including pieces of Vietnamese in dialogue that are not always translated (even though there's a vocabulary at the beginning), which reinforces the feeling of looking outside in, witnessing exchanges that as a non-Vietnamese one wouldn't be able to truly comprehend.

Very strong and impactful novel.