The Book of Salt [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Monique Truong (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: RB Large Print; Large Print edition (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402563809
• ISBN-13: 978-1402563805
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,761,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1968, Monique Truong is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her second novel, Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), is the inaugural selection of the Ladies' Home Journal Book Club. The novel received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a 25 Best Fiction Books of 2010 by Barnes & Noble, a 10 Best Fiction Books of 2010 by Hudson Booksellers, and the adult fiction Honor Book by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association.

Her first novel, The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) was a national bestseller and the recipient of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles National Literary Award, an Association for Asian American Studies Poetry/Prose Award, and a Seventh Annual Asian American Literary Award. In 2003, The Book of Salt was honored as a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Book, one of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books, and one of the Miami Herald's Top 10 Books, among other citations.

Truong is also a contributing co-editor of Watermark: An Anthology of Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose (Asian American Writers' Workshop, 1998).

Truong writes a monthly online food column entitled "Ravenous" for the New York Times' T Magazine. She has contributed to Real Simple, Town & Country, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Saveur, Food & Wine, Gourmet, the Times of London (Saturday Magazine), Time Magazine (Asia edition), and other publications.

Truong was a PEN/Robert Bingham Fellow, a Princeton University's Hodder Fellow, and is now a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.

Truong is also an intellectual property attorney, but she hopes that you will not hold that against her. When she is not writing, which is most of the time, she cooks and takes naps. She lacks many basic life skills such as knowing how to drive a car, ride a bicycle, or read a map. She has been known to walk long distances, though, especially if there is a very good bakery located at the end of that walk.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a sumptuous, sensuous feast of words, April 6, 2003

By 

Fran Sepler "inhaler of great books" (Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Salt: A Novel (Hardcover)

The first person account of the household cook hired by Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein serves up a tale of culture, food, family and sexuality on a bed of beautiful language.

"Thin Bin," as Gertudestein (one word, in his parlance) calls him is a narrator into a world of his own making. Binh,is a product of a deeply rigid and malevolent father and a devoted mother whose self sacrifice gave Bin both a perspective on life and sense of isolation that shapes his narrative. Set against the backdrop of Vietnam under the french, the smells, tastes, rituals and traditions give the reader a sense of time and place that is heat and spice, water lily and devastation.

At an early age, Binh joins his brother in the kitchen of the French Governor General, where the art of food becomes work and avocation. The role of power and nationality and the tension between colonialism and identity play out in the foods demanded, called for against the natural inclinations of the ingredients aned the preparers. The description of preparing a sabayon in Vietnamese heat is rich and heady with cultural depth. When the head chef leaves he is replaced by another Frenchman, rather than a native, and the imperious replacement variously dominates and seduces Binh, whose sexuality plays as an emerging subtext throughout the book.

Once his relationship with the chef is discovered, Binh flees in shame for a prolonged sea voyage, and finds himself in Paris, where he cooks for a variety of clients. In fact, his very identity becomes blended with his ability to feed those who will hire him to do so:
"...I scramble to seek shelter in the kitchens of those who will take me. Every kitchen is a homecoming...a familiar story that I can embellish with saffron, cardomom, bay laurel and lavender. In their heat and in their steam, I allow myself to believe that it is the sheer speed of my hands, the flawless measurement of my eyes, the science of my tongue that is rewarded..."

Eventually, he answers an ad that begins "two American ladies wish to hire..." and becomes so much more than just a cook to Stein and Toklas, with insights into their special love for one another, and they trading off on his discretion and cooking genius for his own frailties and imperfections.

For food lovers, this book is an inhalation and a taste of everything that makes the difference between cooking and cuisine. For lovers, it is the sensual wording of touch and proximity. For the literary, it is an insight into the imagined life of Toklas and Stein as lovers and creators of literary works. For those looking for cross-cultural storytelling, it is the bridge betweeen Vietnam, France and America that results in a crossroad of Binh at the Gare in Paris, deciding whether to go to America with his sponsors, to stay in Paris where he has found lovers, or to go to Vietnam, where his story began and his identity belongs.

This book is spellbinding, compelling, beautfully written. I read it slowly because I knew as soon as I finished I would regret losing the voice, the sensuality and the depth of Binh. A masterpiece!

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars strong 3 but overly-effusive language drowns story a bit, September 27, 2004

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Salt: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Book of Salt has as its premise a hook that is bound to grab those who like books about books or authors. Its narrator is "thin binh" as he is called by Gertrude Stein and the novel seems to promise an interior look at the lives of Stein and Toklas. Anyone searching for that book here will be disappointed, however. While there are some great moments of characterization with regards to the famous duo, they really are a minor sidestory. The story truly is Binh's--how he got from Vietnam to his position as cook to "the Steins" as he refers to them and what he will do while they head off to America. The fact that it is his story isn't necessarily a bad decision, but the reader looking for more on the literary/artistic world one first thinks of upon hearing Gertrude Stein needs to be forewarned.

That put aside, the Book of Salt is a good book, but one burdened somewhat by the author's predilection for soupy, dense language. If one wants to continue the food metaphor started by the author herself (and I promise to do so just this once), then the novel is overspiced, the author lacking a bit in the light deftness needed to be a superb cook. Some of the language is truly beautiful, some will sweep you along, but there is no moderation in its use and so the book often, though not always, sinks underneath its linguistic weight.

The plot is interesting and compelling enough. Binh's story is told through interrupted flashbacks which help maintain suspense and answers the reader would like to have our slowly teased out of the narrative--what happened to drive him from home, what happened to several of his relationships, what will happen when the Steins go to America--does he join them, stay in Paris, or return home in answer to his brother's request?

A few scenes are perhaps a bit contrived, the food metaphor more often so, but these are relatively minor flaws in the whole. Binh's character and that of his mother stand out as wonderful creations, three-dimensional characters for whom the reader truly feels something. And if the Steins are more often in the background, as mentioned, there are still some wonderfully telling moments, often small but sharp.

It's hard to fault a book too much for its effusiveness, especially one where the other elements such as plot and character are so solid, thus the strong three as the recommendation. And I would happily pick up a second book by the author in hopes that the same intensity of language is there if not its frequency. Well-recommended with a few caveats.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smooth and strong writing, perhaps lacking seasoning?, April 24, 2005

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Book of Salt: A Novel (Paperback)

I would tend to agree with the reviewer who gave The Book of Salt a strong 3-star rating. I think in the end I liked it a little bit more than that, so came down on the side of a weak 4-star review.

The Book of Salt is the first novel-length work by Truong. It has a fascinating concept. We know from history that Stein and Toklas had at different points two chefs from "Indochine". Nothing more is known. Truong picks up that point of unknown and spins it into a novel about love, identity, home and food.

The most successful thing about the book is its meditation on the relationship between the subject of the story and the teller of a story. Binh is at his most interesting when it is clear that he is as unreliable as Stein at telling his own past. The layers of narration that Truong creates are fascinating and finely drawn. Whatever the flaws that the book might have, I found it delightful to read for this alone.

The Book of Salt is less successful at investing Binh with enough of a character to really give the book depth. He is more a collection of traits than a person in his own right. It is not just his audience in Paris and his family back home who are projecting their issues and needs onto Binh, in the end it is the author herself. This strange shallowness is made more obvious by all of the well-written but self-indulgent prosody exploring the images of food and love.

In all, a fine first novel, and one that makes me want to read the second. The Book of Salt should appeal to readers with a taste for smart historical fiction or foodies with an eye for good description.