[.ca] The Book of Salt: A Novel (ISBN 0618304002)

Trompe d'oeil:
This book's wealth of detail, insight, and style are positively seductive. For the first 30 pages I kept asking myself if it was possible that a book could be so beautifully written. Unfortunately, the answer is complicated. The reason I couldn't place where the writing struck me is that it is beautiful while being profoundly false. Despite its charms, the book lacks a strong emotional or narrative thread, touching down where Truong wishes to spend time rather than where any kind of intellectual or emotional interest might take us. The whole book begins to smell of artifice well before the the end. Perhaps most grievously, this book is a Classic example of a middle-class person writing about poor people. Absolutely missing is any sense of the dirt, despair, and darkness of lives lived under the thumb of colonialism and racism. The poetic language in many ways betrays the detailed, lovely writing, exposing it as the fantasy of someone far distant from the world of which she writes. Ultimately, Truong comes off as a romantic poseur. A very convincing one, but you can smell the tin beneath the flowers.

Lovely and strange:
Truong's "The Book of Salt" is the first-person story of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas' live-in cook, a homosexual Vietnamese man with ghosts in his past and his head. Binh, though we never learn what his real name is, grows up poor, the child of a loving mother and tyrannical father. His older brother apprentices him in the kitchen of the Governor-General's house, a place where no one has value unless he is French, or speaks some. These early lessons resonate through his life, as he travels as a ship's cook and struggles to survive in Paris. His reflections on language and love are strange, the effect of the book troubling. Though we can hear Binh's voice, somehow we can never really see him; he is in hiding, lost.

A Beautiful Book:
With The Book of Salt, author Monique Truong has created a beautiful and fascinating glimpse into the lives of two of the most iconic lesbians to have ever lived: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Yet, their story is not told through either of these amazing women, but instead through their Vietnamese cook, Bình-a young man struggling with many secrets and inner demons. Having fled from Vietnam in disgrace, Bình finds himself in Paris. The year is 1929 and he has been through a succession of brief, miserable positions as a household cook. While perusing the help-wanted section, he spots an intriguing ad: "Two American ladies wish to retain a cook..." He decides to apply, and his life will never be the same. Truong tells the story of Bình's life in a mosaic of scenes, moving back and forth chronologically, revealing a little at a time until the puzzle is complete. Through the telling, we are treated to an intimate glance into the private lives of Stein and Toklas. Truong's writing is gorgeous, almost poetic at times. You almost feel a sense of loss when you reach the final page. I highly recommend this book.

false:
This books starts off on a false note, and maintains it. I never believed for a second that the narrator is really the person who is speaking. It seemed painfully obvious that the vietnamese male character is merely a front for the author to 'wax poetic' about food and various everyday details. I have heard that a sign of bad writing is when the author is too infatuated with their own words. The falseness of this book makes me wonder if the author is kind blathering on in a self-titillating display that is meant to impress upon the reader how observant and effete she is. The observations seem detailed, but that is the problem, they only appear to be detailed and nuanced when they wind up being curiously faux. It reminds me of the stimulating but hollow new york, literary crowd that is both intelluctual, cynical, and righteous. Is not the setting in Paris, a romantic cliche? It reminds me of the pretentiousness of the film the Scent of Green Papaya.

Rich, colorful, insightful into the human spirit:
Beyond an interesting subject matter and setting (Vietnamese cook to Gertrude Stein and Alice B.Toklas in Paris), the most striking thing about this book is the way in which it is told. Never have I seen a story told with such beautiful language, such rich imagery! And the book tells a story about people, how they relate to one another, what makes them connect (or not). Wonderful.