Released in April 2020, this historical fiction is set in the French colony of Indochine in the 1930s. If you do not know about the history of Indochine, this is a great one to get you started.
Content Notes: Sexual content, mental health, separation from child, domestic abuse, murder, extramarital relationship.
Thoughts On A Hundred Suns
I love the cover of this book! A woman with her hat partially covering her face is a representation of our main character, Jesse, and I believe, how she has lived her life up until this point. As an American who had a horrible childhood, Jesse escaped to Paris at the first chance she could find. However, traumatising childhood memories leave an impact on us and the one thing that we are running from, often comes back to haunt us. A Hundred Suns is Jesse’s story about confronting her past, standing up for herself and the choices that she made, while at the same time navigating the political landscape of Indochine with her husband, Victor. Together they are the new managers of the Michelin rubber plantations and there are a lot of problems that need addressing.
There is also another perspective in the story, that of Marcelle which gives us solid foundations for what was happening to Jesse and how the two and their past were interconnected.
On The Lavish Life of Expatriates
When Jesse and Victor arrive at Hanoi with their daughter, they are taken to a massive mansion where they would be living. Later, they go to the offer’s club, enjoying drinks and socialising with other French expatriates in the colony. A Hundred Suns portrays the expatriate life as a very rich and lavish one. There are boat rides, parties, formal dinners, and much more. Jesse is now in a culture that loves opium and there is some pressure to try out the high. All the day-to-day work is given over to the Indochinese servants that the French employ.
Over the course of the story, we learn about the loyalties of the servants and some are genuine and care about Jesse, but others are there for their own gain and ulterior motives. There is a commentary on how much household employees know about their employers, from who they are seeing to what they are eating, and this level of influence is not one to be taken lightly in a colony with unrest.
On Indochine
Indochine is the present day Vietnam, Lao and Cambodia region. Hanoi is still a prominent city in Vietnam. In the 1930s trains and taxis were the main modes of transport between cities, some of the major railway networks still under construction. A Hundred Suns portrayed the difference between local and European hotels in the region while also describing the region where Jesse was travelling and how it was different from the places she had already lived at. I don’t recall reading any books about French colonies before, so this was a fascinating experience for me. Though both the POVs were foreigners, they almost provided the perspective that a tourist might have when visiting the region. I read this story with a sepia filter, imagining a world that is not yet technologically advanced.
On Communism and Anti-colonialism
One of the main commentaries of the book was about communism and anti-colonialism. There were instances in the book where people had been prosecuted because they were communists (by the time 1930s rolled out, the world had already seen the effects of communism in Russian) so it is not surprising that the movement’s uprising was trying to be curbed. While communism is about the government owning everything in the market, anti-colonialism is wanting to be free of the rule of a foreign government. The French did not give enough credit to the Indochinese people for knowing the difference between the two. Through Jesse and Victor, we learn about the consequences of being in high positions and how the company’s actions reflect on those who manage it.
On Jesse
I have talked a lot about the world building and set up above and now I want to briefly touch on Jesse – I loved her as the protagonist. She had a rough go in life, and she did what she could to make the best of it. Juggling her own anxiety about her past being revealed while supporting and guiding Victor through this new transition, she has few people she can trust. Her relationship with her daughter Lucie is touching and emotional and her time in Indochine will leave marks in numerous ways.
Overall, A Hundred Suns was an informative book which does a fantastic job of showing the expatriate life of the French in Indochine. The audiobook was able to provide rich world building and, unlike a number of historical fiction that I have read, the plot was partly thriller, which helps keep this book engaging. There is so much to learn from this book!
A Hundred Suns is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up A Hundred Suns? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
An evocative historical novel set in 1930’s Indochine, about the American wife of a Michelin heir who journeys to the French colony in the name of family fortune, and the glamorous, tumultuous world she finds herself in—and the truth she may be running from.
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.
Motivated by love, driven by ambition, and seeking self-preservation at all costs, Jessie and Marcelle each toe the line between friend and foe, ethics and excess. Cast against the stylish backdrop of 1930s Indochine, in a time and place defined by contrasts and convictions, A Hundred Suns is historical fiction at its lush, suspenseful best.
