The Book of Salt (Hardcover)

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Review
In the 1920s Binh, a young Vietnamese boy, sets sail from Saigon to seek his fortune in France. He leaves behind a family torn by grief and shame, and finds a new life in Paris as a cook for the infamous writer Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B Toklas. Thus begins this heartfelt study of loss, exile and the longings of the dispossessed. The narrative shifts between Stein's eccentric household, Binh's isolated and secretive private life in Paris, and his ruminations on his fraught and bitter relationship with his father. As we move from one location to another and back again, the story of Binh's troubled family and his own precarious position in his adopted country slowly unfolds. Although an outsider in the literary circles of his employers, he has vowed not to return to his ancestral home in Saigon which remains, after years of exile, the source of all his inspiration and all his pain. But his older brother has written demanding he return, and Binh is once again torn between the need for freedom and the call of duty. Monique Truong's first novel is a wistful, introspective and beautifully written work. She's tackled some big themes for a first-timer, and developed them with a sensitivity and conviction that mark her as a writer of real talent. Her gentle, retrospective narrative could easily dissolve into repetitive longings and cliched tracts on alienation, yet it doesn't. This is not an author who will broach the self-indulgent or sentimental. Each page is suffused with the pain of exclusion and the hope of belonging, the need for intimacy and the value of keeping one's own counsel. Every relationship's precise balance and intricate power play is depicted faithfully, with a sometimes unnerving clarity. A remarkable first novel from a promising young writer. (Kirkus UK)

Product Description
"[He] came to us through an advertisement that I had in desperation put in the newspaper. It began captivatingly for those days: 'Two American ladies wish...' " It was these lines in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook that inspired The Book of Salt, a brilliant first novel by a talented young Vietnamese American writer about the taste of exile. Paris, 1934, 'Thin Bin', as they call him, has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to the 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? Binh fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the personal cook at the famous apartment on the rue de Fleurus. Before Binh's decision is revealed, we are catapulted back to his youth in French-colonized Indo China, where he learned to cook in the embassy kitchens, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out fragrant repasts for the doyennes of the Lost Generation. Binh knows far more than what the Steins eat: he knows their routines and intimacies, their food and follies. With wry insight, we see Stein and Toklas ensconced in rueful domesticity. But is Binh's account reliable? A lost soul, he is a late-night habitue of the Paris demi-monde, an exile and an alien, a man of musings, memories, and possibly lies, susceptible to drink and occasional self-mutilation with a kitchen knife...Love is the prize that has eluded him, from his family to the men he has sought out in his farflung journeys, often at his peril and more recently with risk to Stein's manuscript notebooks. Intricate, compelling, and witty, the novel weaves in historical characters, from Stein and Toklas to Paul Robeson and Ho Chi Minh, with remarkable originality. Tastes, oceans, sweat, tears -- The Book of Salt is an inspired novel about food and exile, love and betrayal.

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2 Reviews 5 star:    (0) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:  (1) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   2.0 out of 5 stars rambling, incoherent, disjointed, 24 Jan 2007 By  H. Ashford "hashford" (Sheffield, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    This review is from: The Book of Salt (Paperback) The use of language and the descriptions, especially of people, are beautifully drawn, BUT (and this is a big "but"), the book jumps around in time in a most confusing manner - and there were still passages that I couldn't quite place in the sequence of events, despite going back over them - giving it a rambling and disjointed feel. Unfortunately, this book didn't manage to give me either a feel for 1930's Paris or much insight into the life of poor Vietnamese in French-occupied Indo-China - much of the rambling was exploring the narrator's relationships with his mother and father and his current lover. Nothing was explained at all clearly - and this book just didn't do it for me. It gets 2*s only because of the lovely use of language Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   4.0 out of 5 stars Vietnamese Melancholic, 9 Sep 2007 By  Idinha "femalegriot" - See all my reviews Set in Saigon in the 1920s and in Paris in the early 1930s, this is a deeply moving novel about loss and exile. The main character has loved and lost, several times, but it is the loss of the homeland and its rich language, and especially of his long suffering mother, that is the root of his sadness. With the same sensitivity he shows as a cook, he describes his relationship with his employers, 'the Steins'; i.e. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. He is captivated by Miss Toklas and her quiet yet effective ways of pleasing, not unlike his own. The cameo portrait of Ho Chi Minh during his early years of exile is a definite added bonus to this fine debut novel. I am eagerly awaiting Ms. Truong's next work of fiction. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 2 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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