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The Book of Salt: Summary and book reviews of The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, plus links to an excerpt from The Book of Salt and a biography of Monique Truong.
The Book of Salt
by
Monique Truong
Hardcover: Apr 2002,
272 pages.
Paperback: Jun 2004,
272 pages.
In Paris, 1934, Bình has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to the train station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with “the Steins,” stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Having fled his homeland in disgrace, Bình has spent the past five years serving as the personal cook at the famous apartment on the rue de Fleurus. Before Bình reveals his decision, he catapults back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out repasts for the doyennes of the Lost Generation. With wry insight, he views the Steins ensconced in rueful domesticity. But is Bình’s account reliable? A lost soul, he is a late-night habitué of the Paris demimonde, an exile and an alien, a man of musings and memories, and, possibly, lies. Love is the prize that has eluded him, from his family to the men he has sought out in his far-flung journeys. Intricate, compelling, and witty, the novel weaves in historical characters, from Stein and Toklas to Paul Robeson and Ho Chi Minh, with remarkable originality. Flavors, seas, sweat, tears —The Book of Salt is an inspired feast of storytelling riches.
Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
A mesmerizing narrative voice, an insider's view of a fabled literary household and the slow revelation of heartbreaking secrets contribute to the visceral impact of this first novel.
Booklist Margaret Flanagan
Using salt as a metaphor for food, sweat, tears and the sea, and interweaving the narrative with suggestions of ingredients, recipes, and exotic dishes, Truong provides a savory debut novel of unexpected depth and emotion.
Kirkus Reviews
In a dazzling if sometimes daunting debut, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas's Vietnamese cook tells his story-and theirs.... A tour de force. Truong should take literate America by storm.
The Miami Herald
...seductive tale of exile, memory, sex, identity, language, the sins of colonialism and the social and cultural politics of food.
The New York TImes Book Review
...fascinating first novel.. Truong's birthplace...is evoked here with piercing yearning and authenticity.
The New York Times - Christopher Benfey
The story of the uprooted basket weaver is a parable for the kind of vessel that Monique Truong has fashioned in The Book of Salt. Against the odds, she has made unsettling art from precisely such exotic cuttings and transplantings.
The Los Angeles Times - Carmela Ciuraru
Binh is deeply troubled (clearly more so as the novel goes on), yet he is oddly noble, determined to find a life of dignity for himself. That the account of his life story ultimately proves unreliable makes Binh no less memorable or compelling a figure. And it makes Truong's debut seem more impressive and ambitious than most contemporary first works of fiction, which often read like thinly fictionalized memoirs. This novel, however, displays its author's supple imagination on every page.
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