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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780618446889 
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Awards
2003 Bard First Fiction Prize
Powells.com Staff Pick
I enjoyed this book for its quirky story line — a young Vietnamese cook, who is also gay, comes to live in Paris with his brother who is an aspiring chef. After a brief stint working alongside his sibling he loses the job and comes to inquire for a position as a live-in cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. What ensues is the combination of pressures he must balance in order to explore his individuality and to come to terms with the very exacting demands of the famous couple he now works for. Mark, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from his unique vantage point in the kitchen, Binh invents both fragrant repasts and rueful observations on their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. Binh's journey from Saigon to Paris is a mesmerizing story that ebbs and flows over five years and weaves memory and history. He takes us back to his youthful servitude in Vietnam under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his fateful encounters in Paris not only with Stein and Toklas but with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh. It is a tale of yearning and betrayal, France and Asia, salted with tears and sweat.
"Evocative and complex," says the San Francisco Chronicle. "Readers are in for much pleasure from this new novelist. The Book of Salt is a lovely book."
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Synopsis:
Synopsis:
In Paris, 1934, Binh 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? Binh has 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 live-in cook at the famous apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus.
Before Binh's decision is revealed, his mesmerizing narrative catapults us back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, 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 the contents of the Steins' pantry: he knows their routines and intimacies, their manipulations and follies. With wry insight, he views 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 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, often at his peril.
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.
About the Author
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
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Shoshana, May 24, 2008 (view all comments by Shoshana)
A lyrical and evocative reflection on colonialism, but reported as a story about desire and wholeness. The narrator, Binh, is Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas's Vietnamese cook at 27 rue des Fleurus in Paris. Some reviewers have critiqued it for not being enough about Stein and Toklas; this is like criticizing A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for not focusing on King Arthur. While Stein and Toklas provide a foil and a context, this is Binh's narrative. While Vietnam and France are the backdrop, he is a young man both literally and figuratively at sea.
Though I occasionally tripped over a bit of Truong's prose, overall the novel flows well, is a joy to read, and mixes sweet, sour, bitter, and salt as exactingly as any cook could wish.
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Karin, April 21, 2007 (view all comments by Karin)
The Book of Salt has the most beautiful prose you will ever read. Read it for the story, but savor the language along the way.
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salliforth1, March 29, 2006 (view all comments by salliforth1)
This was favorite read of 2005. Beautiful language, inexorable sadness -- a compelling story of Gertrude Stein's and Alice B. Toklas' Vietnamese cook. Binh doesn't fit anywhere; not in Vietnam, not in Paris, not in the countryside. He is invisible. He cooks. He loves and is loved (as much as an invisible person can). He searches for a life that is always out of reach. And his story is told in salt: Salt in tears, salt in food, salt in sweat, salt in the sea. Lovely and haunting.
View all 3 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780618446889
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Mariner Books
- Location:
- Boston
- Subject:
- Literary
- Copyright:
- 2003
- Edition Description:
- Trade paper
- Publication Date:
- June 2004
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 261
- Dimensions:
- 8.26x5.58x.68 in. .63 lbs.
