The Book of Salt

by Monique Truong

Binh, a Vietnamese cook, flees Saigon in 1929, disgracing his family to serve as a galley hand at sea. The taunts of his now-deceased father ringing in his ears, Binh answers an ad for a live-in cook at a Parisian household, and soon finds himself employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Toklas and Stein hold court in their literary salon, for which the devoted yet acerbic Binh serves as chef, and as a keen observer of his "Mesdames" and their distinguished guests. But when the enigmatic literary ladies decide to journey back to America, Binh is faced with a monumental choice: will he, the self-imposed "exile," accompany them to yet another new country, return to his native Vietnam, or make Paris his home?

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Queer, LGBT, France, Historical, Food

261 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2003

About the author

Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, Monique Truong came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975. She is a writer based now in Brooklyn, New York. Her award-winning novels are The Sweetest Fruits (Viking Books, 2019), Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), and the national bestseller The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). She is the co-editor of Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition (DVAN Series, Texas Tech University Press, 2023). With fashion designer Thai Nguyen and New York Times bestselling illustrator Dung Ho, Truong is the co-author of Mai's Áo Dài, a children's picture book (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 2025).

A Guggenheim Fellow, U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow in Tokyo, Visiting Writer at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Princeton University’s Hodder Fellow, Kirk Writer-in-Residence at Ages Scott College, Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College (CUNY), and Frank B. Hanes Writer-in-Residence at UNC-Chapel Hill, Truong was most recently awarded a John Gardner Fiction Book Award and a John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Truong received her BA in Literature from Yale and her JD from Columbia Law School.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fictional story of Binh, a Vietnamese man who is a cook to two real people in the 1930’s – Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.

Stein ruled the roost by her presence, but Toklas did all the heavy lifting. Toklas typed, edited and proofread all of Stein’s work. She handled schedules, was the bouncer for unwanted guests, ran the household, did the hiring and firing of staff and personally cooked for Gertrude on Sunday, the cook’s day off.



But it’s not a biography of Stein and Toklas with the cook serving as informant about the visiting bigwigs, who are almost never mentioned by name. Yet we do learn quite a bit about the two women, the most tell-tale phrase I thought was this: “They were both in love with Gertrude Stein.” Their guests called them “The Steins” behind their backs. They cultivated photographers.

But this story is his, not theirs. He was their cook for several years and at one time in the story, 1934, we are told that Stein was 60 and Toklas 57. His story is told in bit and pieces of reminiscences, so we learn about Binh’s pre-Paris life little by little and not in chronological order.

We learn of his nasty, domineering Catholic father who treated his wife and children as animals. We read of Binh’s loss of his job as a kitchen helper in Vietnam, his few years as a cook aboard freighters, his hopping ship upon his arrival in France, his thoughts in the kitchen, his observations of ‘The Steins,’ (he thinks of them as “My Mesdames”) and his love life on his days off.



Binh is gay. His employers know that (they are both gay) but they don’t know that at one point, his ‘Sweet Sunday Man’ is one of their guests. They leave Paris each year for a country estate in Bilignin (in eastern France near Switzerland and Italy). He is the first Asian person that many in the rural area have ever seen. The ghost of his father is constantly with him, criticizing and demeaning him. His father was disgusted with him when he leaned of his son’s sexual orientation.

Food is a major theme in the book, but, although we get enough detail on occasion to form a ‘recipe,’ that’s not the point. We get almost philosophical discourses on what it means to serve someone fried eggs vs. an omelet or the dirt behind the scenes of stellar chefs. Imagine the intimacy of cooking for someone for several years.

Binh drinks: he tipples in the kitchen; his employers know it and allow it and he drinks to excess at times. There is mention of Prohibition on-going in the USA and it had never occurred to me to wonder “What did the French or other Europeans make of America banning alcohol?” LOL

The title refers to the varieties of salt: from the kitchen, sweat, tears, or the sea?

There is good writing and a lot of remarkable insight into human nature:

“All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty.”

The cook-wanted ad in the newspaper that Binh responded to read: “Two American ladies wish…” “Of course, two American ladies in Paris these days would only ‘wish’ because to wish is to receive. To want, well, to want is just not American.”

“Most Parisians can ignore and even forgive me for not having the refinement to be born amidst the ringing bells of their cathedrals, especially since I was born instead amidst the ringing bells of the replicas of their cathedrals, erected in a far-off colony to remind them of the majesty, the piety of home.”

“Worse, Leo [Stein’s brother in Paris] had allowed his interest in other people’s art to surpass their interest in his.”

Gertrude Stein’s salon attracted a regular crowd of amazingly talented writers and artists: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Sinclair Lewis, Picasso, Matisse, Rousseau. But these individuals are not mentioned by the chef. The story is fiction although Stein and Toklas did at times have ‘Indochinese’ chefs. (Although that telling colonial term does not even make a distinction among Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotians, etc.)



The author, Monique Truong, was born in Saigon in 1968 and came to the U.S. as a refugee when she was six years old. The Book of Salt was her first novel. I thought it was an excellent read although I may be an outlier. I should say it has a relatively low rating on GR of 3.5. Yet it was a New York Times Notable Book and a national bestseller. It won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the Asian American Literary Award. All this considered I highly recommend it.

Top photo: Gertrude Stein (r) and Alice Toklas from from alchetron.com
The residence of Gertrude Stein at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris from washburn.edu/reference/awp/stein2.jpg
The author from thefamouspeople.com/profiles

[Whitaker · Rating 1 out of 5]

An epic failure of research and imagination.

The reviewers on GR who have rated this novel highly have generally praised its poetic evocation of love and loss. Okay, I can get that. The novel is an extended dirge of a life spent in unrequited longing as a result of a loveless childhood and an equally loveless adulthood. All of it told in prose like this:

I am at sea again. I am at sea again. Not the choppy, churning body that bashes open a ship's hull like a newborn's soft skull. Yes, a sapphire that a ship's bow skims and grooves. A calming blue expanse between now and Sunday.

That little paragraph is a description of the main character's emotions after learning that his current lover wants to see him again the next weekend.

Here's another sample, this time the main character, Bình, describes love:

Quinces are ripe, GertrudeStein, when they are the yellow of canary wings in midflight. They are ripe when their scent teases you with the snap of green apples and the perfumed embrace of coral roses. But even then quinces remain a fruit, hard and obstinate—useless, GertrudeStein, until they are simmered, coddled for hours above a low, steady flame. Add honey and water and watch their dry, bone-coloured flesh soak up the heat, coating itself in an opulent orange, not of the sunrises that you never see but of the insides of tree-riped papayas, a colour you can taste. To answer your question, GertrudeStein, love is not a bowl of quinces yellowing in a blue and white china bowl, seen but untouched.

If that kind of writing is what you like, then go for it. Unfortunately, that is all you are going to get here. And frankly, that's far too little for me.

It's irritating to be jerked out of a prose induced reverie when a metaphor for the forming of opinions is written thusly:

But once they are formed, ours become the thick, thorny coat of a durian, a covering designed to forestall the odour of rot and decay deep inside.

Now obviously, the writer does not know (a) that among us South-east Asians, durians are called the king of fruit and that odour is highly prized and (b) yes, you can smell that odour even with the thick thorny coat on. No indigenous Vietnamese man would describe the durian thusly. It would be the equivalent of a French chef referring to the smell of a Roquefort as putrid, decaying rot.

In a fairly crucial plot point, she refers to Bình’s grandmother giving jade earrings as a dowry for his mother. That jangled for me instantly, since in Vietnamese culture it is the groom that is required to give a dowry (or, strictly, the bride-price).

She writes of ancestor “worship” thus:

After my mother gave birth to me, there were many things she could no longer pray to her father and mother about. They would have disowned her. Then whom would she have left to worship, whose likeness would she have left to reconfigure from memory for her family altar? There is no forgiveness in ancestor worship, only retribution and eternal debt.

That is extremely irritating to read. It's an outsider’s description marking mostly a complete failure of understanding. Asians don’t worship ancestors the way Christians worship their God. A closer term would be ancestor veneration. There is no prayer or conversation with ancestors akin to confiding in God and the saints. Incense, food, and other offerings are made by way of both showing respect and to feed them in the afterlife. And the family altar is never never never kept via the woman. That’s why sons are so important. A woman is married out into the husband’s family. She takes HIS ancestors.

There were other clunkers like this that kept popping up, but what finally did the novel in for me were Bình’s descriptions (and this is first-person narrative) of things that happened between Alice B Toklas and Gertrude Stein, private conversations that he, a servant who could not speak English, could not possibly have overheard or—having overheard—understood. He describes, for instance, a fight that takes place between Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo before he arrives to work for them, and the ensuing private conversation between Alice and Gertrude:

[Leo]…concluded for all to hear that Gertrude’s writing was nothing more than babble…“Babble!” GertrudeStein complained to Miss Toklas. “Lovey, there can only be one,” Miss Toklas whispered, repeating the phrase that would absolutely, mercilessly sever GertrudeStein from her brother Leo, her only one…. Leo wrote a note to his sister, as they had chosen to no longer speak, accusing Miss Toklas of stealing her away from him. When Miss Toklas read this, she laughed, and wrote back, “Your sister gave herself to me.”

Okay, Bình doesn’t speak English much less read it, so the only way he would know of the contents of the two letters is if the two of them told him of this. Yes, I can see that happening: the two mistresses confiding this very private event to their cook. Total bollocks!

But why include this event then? Does it pertain in any way to Bihn's story or his development as a character? No. It seems to be written in only so that Truong can impart this stunning bit of writerly post-modern wisdom: “How true, I think. A gift or a theft depends on who is holding the pen.” If Monique Truong had wanted to write a fictionalised account about Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas, she should have done just that rather than putting words into the mouth of a badly realised, imperfectly imagined sock puppet who would also come off sounding like a cross between a badly written Hallmark card and a Vietnamese version of Charlie Chan.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel full of distinct ideas and images that never quite came together. Monique Truong's debut book centers on Binh, a gay Vietnamese cook who flees Saigon in 1929 to work as a galley hand at sea. He narrates his journey while later employed as a live-in cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two esteemed women who operate a literary salon in Paris. When the two women plan a return trip to America, Binh must confront the ghosts of his family and his exile.

The Book of Salt included a lot of cool phrases and poetic images about sexuality, race, gender, abuse, and more. I got lost - in a good way - in some of Truong's passages; they would often flow from thought to metaphor to sensation and beyond. Her use of Binh's overt introspection to isolate minute details and string them together impressed me

However, I felt an overwhelming lack of direction in The Book of Salt. Binh's mind wanders from place to time to memory to incident without any solid grounding; the impact of his journey decreased because of how Truong did not give his internal rumination enough structure. While Binh's desire for belonging and his curiosity about Stein and Toklas pulsated from the pages of the novel, his intense strands of emotion never merged into a single thread for readers to hold onto and follow.

Overall, a unique book I would recommend to those intrigued by its synopsis, because it does touch on several fascinating subjects. While Truong both hit and miss with The Book of Salt, I would still give another book of hers a shot, if not just for her poetic prose.

[Phillip Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for a course on queer historical fiction. The story is told by a gay Vietnamese cook who works for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris during the late '20s/early '30s. There's not too much plot, but what's there is dispensed slowly, with another piece being added to several timelines with each chapter. The story is drawn from a brief mention in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book about their actual Vietnamese cook, and it is satisfying to read this novel from the latter perspective: it's "the Steins" who are relegated to the background, one part of a longer narrative, and there is hardly any attention paid to the various artistes who came to visit Gertrude Stein (this is a good thing).

The best thing, though, is the writing, which is the verbal equivalent of some incredible, painstakingly prepared meal: every clause seems to be constructed in the most imaginative and appealing way, I remember the description of a halved melon as offering its red belly and "button of seeds", and I wonder how anyone could conceive of such a cool way to describe a fruit...

So it's a "deliciously written" book, as one of the blurbs puts it. It's also a somewhat brooding book, about the loneliness and confusion of moving to a new land with a strange culture and language. As someone who's never gone farther from the U.S. mainland than British Columbia, I was also constantly intrigued by the idea of being an alien in a city of indifferent, condescending or suspicious strangers... This was one of those rare assigned readings that constantly feels like procrastination.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this slim novel, there are some lovely passages that evoke a forlorn loneliness, and the writing about food is quite sensual, depicted in what is often sumptuously poetic prose. But far too often, I longed for Monique Truong to have her narrator speak more clearly to the heart of the matter, rather than allude to the outskirts of what may or may not be happening. So while I was more or less caught in its heady spell from an aesthetic point of view, I needed more clarity of incident, dialogue, and moment-to-moment emotional truth.

It’s still an interesting glimpse into the life of a character unusual in the literature I’ve read: a Vietnamese personal chef who’s emigrated under difficult personal circumstances to Paris, and winds up working for the famous lesbian couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Ultimately, though, to pay homage to the devices employed by Truong, while ingredients were strong, the reading experience did not coalesce into a fully satisfying meal for me.

[Cherie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would like to say that I liked it more, but I just can't. I feel pretty well read, but this story is a mystery of wandering thoughts. Some parts flowed nicely and others were very disjointed and felt completely chopped up.

I still do not understand the title, even at the end. There were many observations of GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas that I really liked and one especially was regarding their "waiting kits" that Miss Toklas packed to give them something to do when their car broke down and they waited for help to arrive.
From the book: "Hers contains a set of knitting needles and several balls of apple green yarn, the disheveled kind with whispy hairs tangled on the surface. She likes the color, so unripe it always makes her pucker just to look at it. But most of all, she likes how the crispness of the color serves as a foil for the texture of the yarn, a melt-in-her-hand sensation. The eyes tell her one story, and the hands tell her another." It goes on to talk about interchanges and intrigue and personal foibles and the mood of the time. It ends with "My Madame knows that intrigue, like salt, is best if it is there from the beginning." This had to do with salting a roast after it has cooked as opposed to before."

This is not a cooking book kind of story but it talks about cooking. It is not really a story about GS and ABT except that Binh did live with and cook for them for about 5 years. It is supposed to be Binh's story, and it is but I really had to work hard to get through it.

[MD · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected to like this book a lot - it is set in a place and time that interest me (Paris in the 1930s and colonial Viet Nam) and is populated with real-life characters (Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas) who interest me. So why did I give it only one star?
1. Nothing happens. There is no plot. The main character doesn't grow.
2. I don't care for books where the main character is a victim throughout. The main character is victimized by the French imperialists, by his father, by his lovers, and maybe by some others I've forgotten. He is still a victim at the end.
3. "An American restaurant. Bargelike slabs of beef and very tall glasses of cow's milk, I imagined. But when we got there, the red lantern hanging outside announced this was no American restaurant. 'Oh,' I said sighing, 'I was not expecting a Chinese restaurant.' Three kinds of vegetables, any three would do, just as long as they are cheap and drowned in a cornstarch-thickened slurry, I thought." Yes, these words come out of the mouth of a character, not the author, but they don't fit the character so I have to assume that it is really the author who uttered them. This is an example of a kind of mean-spiritedness I sensed from time to time while reading this book.

I usually pass books along to friends or family members when I am done with them, but I couldn't think of anyone I thought might enjoy this book.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the 1920s and 1930s, protagonist and narrator Binh is a young gay Vietnamese cook living in Paris and working as personal chef for Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas. He had to leave French Indochina due to a failed relationship and his father’s disapproval. He tells of his life and loves in Saigon and Paris, as he observes the interactions between Stein and Toklas.

This story is told in stream-of-consciousness in a non-linear timeline with frequent unannounced shifts. There is not much of a plot here, but there are two stories – one of Binh and his travails, and the other of the Stein-Toklas relationship. The writing is evocative and there are several emotionally moving scenes.

The portrayal of Binh as a voice of a marginalized person works particularly well. Binh knows about French cuisine, and this knowledge of food helps him break through some of the traditional stereotypes he often encounters. I liked the elegant writing and storylines, but the structure did not work all that well for me. I think this is a case where the style occasionally gets in the way. Still, I found it well worth reading.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful find. This gem of a novel by first time writer Truong shows great promise. A lyrical meditation on love, sex, food, and post colonial identity, this novel about a Vietnamese chef who works for Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris, is so comfortable in its dreamy imagination and adaptation that is feels ceaseless. It lingers like an ocean voyage.

[Jade]

stunning sentences & i love how i gave this to chris only for him to give it back because he loved it so much and wanted me to read it too

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yine çeviri ile güme gitmiş bir kitap. İngilizcesini soluksuz bitirince eşim, dedim hemen Türkçe'sini edineyim. Karşılaştırmalı okumamla inanılmaz üzücü bir serüven oldu. Gerçek iki karekter, kurgu bir aşçı karekter üzerinden yazılmış. İngilizcedeki o şehvet, sevişen, seven cümlelerin anlamı kaybolmuş Türkçe'de. Neden ki? Söylenen her şey çevrilmiş ama anlamı verilememiş, bu yüzden kitap içine alamadı beni. Okurken bir ışık görüyoruz ama maalesef kelimeler kifayetsiz kalmış. Ben çok üzülüyorum kötü çeviri olunca ya, sanki beş çocuğumu gözümün önünde kesmişlercesine üzülüyorum hatta. Puanın çoğunu orijinal esere verdim.

[Ming · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly beautiful book. Written with poetic and musical notes. The emotions are poignant and bittersweet. A feast that satisfies and drew me in to want more.

If readers like smart, literary and compelling books, this is it. I can't recommend this enough. And I will her other book and others she writes!

Readers will recognize one key theme---of water and its various sources/bodies---how this thread is built and woven throughout the book. Such readers will also relish how the poetry of words works throughout the story.

[Drew Jameson]

This book is driving me crazy. The premise is very interesting; Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas hire a gay Vietnamese cook and the story is his view of his own life and their's in Paris. But beyond the premise, and layer after layer of pretty language, there's nothing. There is absolutely no story, whatsoever. There are virtually no scenes whatsoever, just page after page of densely written summary filled with figurative language and aimless musings on life and love and so on and so on. There are numerous requisite reminders that This Book is About Race and Class and Sexuality, but there isn't a single insight beyond, "Sometimes people are racist. Sometimes people are homophobes. Isn't that a shame." There's nice writing on every page, and some of the chapters weave an idea through from the beginning, disappearing and reappearing at the end to form a nice complete loop of thought. But the narrator never feels like a gay man, always like a young woman imagining a gay man, and the two Madames have almost zero presence in the story. There's no insight into them as characters or women, or historical figures. The narrator reminds us that he's tormented by his sense of guilt and shame towards his macho father, but his father never for even a moment transcends the easiest, cheapest single dimension of insecure macho villain, and the narrator never actually seems tormented. It feels like the diary of a smart woman who likes to write. But that is very, very different from a novel. I lost my place while reading on the bus this morning, and flipping through pages, I had absolutely NO idea if I was ahead or behind of m place in the book, if I was seeing something I hadn't read yet or not.

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

what can i say...this is the only novel where i rediscover the novel every time i read it. not only are the plot and the characters SO very well developed, but the research into gertrude stein & alice b toklas' lives were extremely well done -- not to mention all the social issues addressed and all the boundaries crossed. who could ask for more? monique truong, you are a genius!

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are beloved or hated by all, although more infrequently than I expect. Book of Salt gets very mixed reviews. I’m at the “loved it” end of the spectrum. I love Binh’s voice and observations about food, love, power, oppression, and privilege, what it means to be an immigrant, an outsider, a person mute in the dominant language, a laborer, a gay man.

Book of Salt is set in the 1930s, alternately and sometimes unclearly, in Vietnam, in Paris or the French countryside, or the middle of the ocean, in the distant past, the more near past, or the present. Binh is a live-in chef to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. He alternately refers to them as GertrudeStein and Ms. Toklas, Madame and Madame, or Mesdames. Perhaps you can already hear that language is at the heart of this book: “the vocabulary of servitude is not built upon my knowledge of foreign words but rather on my ability to swallow them” (p. 13). An interesting metaphor from a chef.

Binh’s internal language is lush, insightful, and incisive. He examines, analyzes, and describes his world in surprising and new ways, identifying layers of power (and powerlessness), as a white chef or expat visiting GertrudeStein’s studio would be unable to do. Can one question assumptions and recognize oppression, privilege, and prejudice from inside? (Yes, but with more difficulty.)

Miss Toklas is a Madame who uses her palate to set the standard of perfection. In order to please her, her cook has to do the same, an extremely difficult feat. Her cook has to adopt her tongue, make room for it, which can only mean the removal of his own. That is what she demands from all of her cooks. Impossible, of course, and so eventually they have all had to go. I have stayed this long because I am experienced, qualified in such matters. (p. 211)

What makes Binh so interesting is this contrast between his rich inner narrative and his limited French and English, in which he is almost mute. He observed – unfortunately, only to himself – “Please, Madame, do not equate my lack of speech with a lack of thought” (p. 153).

Still, I wonder whether Binh could have observed and understood as deeply if English or French was his first language. Words are an easy way of expressing ourselves and of learning from others. It takes more patience to listen beyond words: “I tell you to speak to me in the language of your birth. I free myself from the direct translation of your words into understandable feelings and recognizable acts. I leave your words raw, allow myself to experience your language as a medium of songs, improvising and in flux. I imagine your language as water in my hands, reflective and clear” (p. 111).

Binh is an outsider, as a Vietnamese man he is unable to hide. Others are curious about asiatiques, but draw easy and careless assumptions about who he is, dismissing him when they determine he is not an international student, not an Emperor or Prince, just a laborer.

It is this curious mixture of careless disregard and notoriety that makes me long to take my body into a busy Saigon marketplace and lose it in the crush. There, I tell myself, I was just a man, anonymous, and, at a passing glance, a student, a gardener, a poet, a chef, a prince, a porter, a doctor, a scholar. But in Vietnam, I tell myself, I was above all just a man. (p. 152)

In France, Binh was rarely allowed to be a man, rarely seen. Others expended little curiosity on him. (Note for yourself, how do you treat the people serving you in stores, restaurants, or your home…) He also colluded with this plot to make him invisible:

Always discreet, almost invisible, I imagine that when the guests look my way they see, well, they see a floor lamp or a footstool. I have become just that.

“Hardly! You’re not nearly as bright or useful.”

Thank you, Old Man, for showing me the error of my ways. (p. 149)

His father – Binh refers to him as Old Man – is often treated as dead, yet his voice criticizes Binh left and right: as his mother’s bastard, as a gay man, as an unwanted fourth son. Binh noted, Ms. Toklas “had left [her father] behind. I had unfortunately overpacked” (p. 160). Many of us pack and carry our parents’ most unattractive critiques of us.

Parents have tremendous power, power that others don’t have. Binh easily dismissed a medical student’s cure of his sexuality, “a regimen of rigorous physical exercise and a decreased intake of garlic, ginger, and other “hot” spices. No garlic? No ginger. What a quack! I thought …. It identified him as a believer, a healer who places his faith in the body’s ability to transform itself through the denial of what it naturally craves” (p. 128).

Book of Salt is keenly observed and Truong’s language a joy – imagine a lettuce leaf with a single poached oyster on top of “a soft pallet of potatoes. A shaving of black truffle covers all. The potatoes are there for heft and texture, but the truffle, ah, the truffle is a gift for the nose” (p. 210). Binh’s recipe for Salade cancalaise could be a metaphor for his internal language. Nonetheless, Book of Salt’s “plot” is nonlinear (as are our own musings), sometimes leaving me not knowing where I was going. As a result, I turned to and completed several other books while reading this one.

I’m not sure that it mattered where I was going. I was glad to meet Sweet Sunday Man – and very glad to dismiss him – and instead follow Nguyen Ai Quoc’s compassion and wisdom. (Nguyen Ai Quoc was a pseudonym for Ho Chi Minh.)

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

What I am certain of, though, is that we met on a day when this city had the foregone appearance of a memory, as if the present had refused to go to work that day and had said that the past would have to do.

It is the recognition that in the darkest streets of the city there is another body like mine, and that it means me no harm.

This is not a book that's for everyone. It grandiosely favors its prose and its impressionist imprints of scenes and settings to the detriment of any sort of plot or linearity in development, but isn't old and/or white boy enough to garner the usual flocks of pilgrim devotees to its pages. It takes on one of the more romanticized eras of white people historical fiction in the form of the 'Lost Generation', but winds down venues far more queer and expatriate than most of the popularly lauded names of that era ever publicly laid claim to. Ever more to the point, unlike as is still the case in Anglo publishing this far into the 21st century, it is the far off "exotic" colony is the birthplace of the author, rather than the presumptuous colonizer. I've already seen one popular review fault this for lack of authenticity with regards to Vietnam and Vietnamese of that historical period, and as I am simply a white outsider who only has hearsay from many a friend of how they refrain from making overt their dislike of various birthright inheritances in order to not be castigated as a betraying "banana" of an Asian American, I'll leave that particular question to its community to mull over. With regards to myself, I'd choose, for once, to relish rather than nitpick over this romance in this month of pride, romance a word I use not to fully encircle this work in its admittedly noteworthy sensuality, but in its older frame of fictional narrative. For this text is not a mystery to be solved, a climax to be reached, or even a devolvement into the 21st century's interpretation of hubris and penultimate tragedy. Rather, it is a rare piece that is fully capable of selkie-slipping itself over your mundane frame and granting you a life of work and love, trauma and resolution, push and pull, but only if you refrain from stripping it of all that and shoving it into the more excoriatingly demanded narratological framework of question and answer. If it's the last you demand above all else, it's hard to determine who's time is more wasted: your own, or the book's.

Minh the Sous Chef, as the Old Man had renamed him, had told us how the French never tired of debating why the Indochinese of a certain class are never able to master the difficulties, the subtleties, the winged eloquence, of the French language. I now suspect that this is a topic of discussion for the ruling class everywhere. So enamored of their differences, language and otherwise, they have lost the instinctual ability to detect the defiance of those who serve them.

You don't read for as long and as hard as I have without acquiring some measure unabashed confidence in your favorites with regards to the written word, and while Truong is no Woolf, there's a good chance I'll pick up her other works simply to be able to read her some more. I also have a certain level of fondness for period pieces, close enough to be of comfort while distant enough to marvel at, and yet it has been a long time since I have been satisfied by something printed rather than adapted for television. And, of course, there is my persistent interesting in reading outside of the pale when it comes to mainstream of literature. Add in the fact that this work incorporated a healthy dose of indulging my queer sensibilities, and this is a piece that I rightly should have latched onto far earlier than I ended up doing, especially given my idiosyncratic relationship with book ratings that come most fully into play when the average is low and the author is a woman of color. So, the fact that it took a pandemic and a five bucks per bag sale for me to acquire a copy of this is rather ridiculous, but then again, given my poor track record in recent years with both historical fiction and any 21st. c. piece with a bevy of glowing reviews from high places on its back cover, I had some right in refraining as long as I did.

GertrudeStein does not eyeball a paragraph or a sentence. She hears it as her automobile zooms on by.

You will begin with each other's fingers. You will end on your knees.

Once I stopped resisting, I found a piece that had its heroes, its villains, its many a dashing scoundrel (the main character is unfortunately rather the tortured romantic in his tastes, and lord, do I relate sometimes), its rather too saintly a mother, and, of course, the pair of erstwhile expatriate (but not completely ex-bigoted) employers whom I imagine many readers dove into this work in order to get a lush fanfiction glimpse of, along with a couple of historical figures that I either had been pitifully completely unaware of or had lacked knowledge of them before they became a major world player. It is a piece that comes full circle through many an intersection narrative, and the narrative itself is about as trustworthy as the much seduced, much abused, much put upon main character and his grasp on a tripartite of tongues, and the soft silkiness running throughout the narrative thread does not hide the mentions of child abuse, alcoholism, dissociation, and self-harm as much as embellishes and interweaves them into a holism. Far more severe topics than the poetically rendered exquisites of food and its crafting that occupies far more of the work, but when handled without voyeurism or gratuitousness, such an interweaving of the pain with the pleasure can take on the level of catharsis. Of course, such a reception hinges on the right work finding the right reader, but really, what kind of reader-reading connection doesn't?

Madame is a snob but not a prude. She did not care about the relations of two men, just as long as they were of the same social standing and, of course, race.

"Is Lattimore a Negro?" is what they, in the end, want to know. My Mesdames tell me that they just want to be absolutely sure.
All these years in France, you say, and Lovey and Pussy are still Americans, after all.
Of course, they are, Sweet Sunday Man. Of course, they are.

I acquired this work through taking a chance on a bevy of material when it is most cost efficient to do so, and ended up reading it a few months later due to it fitting the theme that I have currently centered some of my reading around, narrowing my possibilities from the hundreds to the tens to the fingers on one hand in order to guarantee variety while minimizing indecision. It's as good a way as any of slowly but surely getting through the wealth of books that the world currently has to offer me, and for every five to ten reads that hem and haw, there is a work such as this. It's not perfect, but it comes close to perfection for a reader like me, a mix of the escapist, the erotic, and the all too real in a package whose quality film adaptation (mini series, perhaps?) I would give my left kidney for. Part of me yearns for more of the story, but another part acknowledges how hit and miss such can be, and I'd rather keep this particular piece in its solo completion rather than risk any less than carefully spliced in addendums leading to nothing but a bout of pathetic backfire. So, who is the ideal reader for this? I'm not sure, but I imagine they don't need the likes of my review to find their way here. As for you reading this, when's the last time you read a work where the main couple was queer, interracial, and didn't involve a single white person? Just saying.

As for the rest of Miss Toklas's words, well, the rest I can imagine.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

If ever a book could be called non-linear, this is it. I always believed Binh told his first person story from the present, or about 1934, and in Paris. Binh is cook for GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas as he calls them. They are not always present, but they are there and, through him, we come to know them while he tells his own story.

This is not unlike those books that take place in one day where you also learn all of the backstory. The location and time changed - his early days in Paris in the mid-20s; as a child or a young adult in Vietnam; a young man aboard a freighter. I have laid them out as if that is the order they appear in the novel. There is almost no order to the novel. Although it didn't take much to figure out the place and usually the time period where his story unfolds. Sometimes the second person creeped in and I was nearly lost. I had to pay close attention!

With only about 60 pages to read today, I awoke thinking about what I might say about this novel. Binh is bitter about his heretofore short life, even cynical to some extent. I wanted to tell him about a conversation I had with my mother over 40 years ago about something I'd read. Happiness isn't always in getting what you like, but in liking what you get. Yeah, I know those things are only occasionally the same thing, but we're talking about happiness, an attitude. Binh, I wanted to say, you need to think about that.

I began to get tired of his attitude and what I'd hoped would be a fantastic read became one I hardly looked forward to finishing. As I started putting some thoughts together, I reminded myself that I don't always have to like the character to like the novel. Well! Take a dose of your own medicine, Elizabeth. It then occurred to me that Truong has written a characterization so real that I was starting to give him advice. Maybe this is better than I'd been thinking. Yes, it is. But I continued to find his attitude tiresome over those last 60 pages. This morning I had hopes that I would convince myself it is more than a 3-star read. I still think it isn't, but I'll wager it sits in the top 1% of that group and on another day might flop over into the 4-star group.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's told from the point of view of a Vietnamese cook who works for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The cook is the narrator, and we learn throughout the story his compelling, and devastating, family history and why he left Vietnam.

I was only a few pages into the book when I realized that I don't have the voice yet for my historical novel I'm writing. Truong has captured a rich, unique voice in her book that is addictive and haunting. I only have ideas and notes, not that voice that will drive the story. And I know the only way to find it is to keep researching and writing.

[Absinthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre: Historical Fiction, Queer Fiction

Single Sentence Summary: A gay Vietnamese cook in 1930’s Paris serves two eccentric lesbians and constantly has his heart broken.

Writing Quality: 10/10 S
The syntax and words used in this book are amazingly considered. There are times where it may read as overly elaborate, however I think this is purposeful when considering that the protagonist’s spoken language is broken. Truong’s writing really makes the reader think and consider not just the social implications of the book, but deeper questions about identity as well.

Perspective: First and Second person

Overall Plot: 7/10 C
Not a whole lot happens in this book, plotwise. It can also be difficult to follow, because the author uses a lot of flashbacks and jumps in time. The only reason that I don’t rate the plot lower, is because the plot isn’t what is important to this book, it’s the discussion of race, sexuality, and identity.

Diversity: 10/10 S
Vietnamese and ‘Indochinese’ colonization is integral to this story. The main character is a Vietnamese, gay cook/servant in Paris. Two main characters are American lesbian women in Paris, who have left America in order to be free from the expectation of being a housemaker. There is also a character who is bi-racial (white and black) during the 1930’s and has moved to Paris in order to have a life for himself. He is also gay. There is a lot of intersectionality in this book that people should be aware of.

Characterization: 9/10 A
The characterization is very detailed in this book, however the characterization that feels lacking is actually from the main character. This could be representative of the emptiness/loneliness that Binh feels, however I wish the author would have reflected more characterization from Binh in other characters.

Favorite Character: Binh. It’s kind of hard to like any of the other characters because they all abandon him anyway.

Message: 10/10 S
The diversity is the message, and by that I mean that Truong is telling the story of a minority in a time of overt oppression, and that is a story that people should know and learn from.

Overall: 9/10 A
Trigger Warnings: Homophobia, Racism, Sexism, Spousal Abuse
Tags: Vietnamese, Colonization, 1930s, France, Lesbians, Gays, Cooking

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

How can a book be both amazing and dull at the same time? The language was so fresh it pulled me in immediately, thinking "a major five-star read!" And much of the text was riveting with its rich details, scrumptious foods, romantic tension, and exotic (to me) locales. But the story started to bog down due, in part, to its frequent changes of time and place. And certain confusions (was the dad still alive in Vietnam, or speaking from the grave?).

Also, it seems that modern literary novels insist on long, dense paragraphs with no white space. That solid text may be the trend, but it is not so good for my tired eyes and distracted thoughts.

There were many good parts of the story. I loved eavesdropping on GertrudeStein and Alice, and their domestic habits and affections (whether fictionalized or not). Their prissy little dogs added humor. And Binh's "romantic" encounters were subtle and exquisite, though, of course, tragic in the end.

I'd like to read other books by this author with the same fresh language, but more of a plot.

[BiblioGrrl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The prose and poetic license were light and lovely. But they took me down a road of distraction and I found it difficult to get back on track following the story. The narrator made me laugh, but mostly because his tone and voice were almost satirical and didn't match the character. I enjoyed hearing about the cultural references and food-related parts but there weren't enough of these to save this one.

[Shannon (That's So Poe)]

DNF (Did Not Finish) @ 14%

Although the premise of this book is so intriguing, the writing style was too flowery and dense for me. Add in the jumps in perspective and time, and it just made it very hard to get into the story. I know other people love this book, though, so it likely just depends on personal taste!

Content Warnings:
homophobia, racism, child abuse

[Adri · Rating 5 out of 5]

CWs: some incurred homophobia and use of outdated racial epithets

I'm crying lots, fam. I knew from chapter one that this book was gonna change my life, and boy howdy, am I changed.

[sully · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thought this was really beautifully written! excited to discuss in book club! made me hungry!!! made me want to go back to paris!!!!

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Book of Salt offered the appeal of a Vietnamese man's point of view, as he makes his way from his home country to France to eventually become the home chef for Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice Toklas. And it did provide that with episodic, and also nicely interlayered chapters about various incidents in Bình's eventful life, with food and kitchens a central focus. Colonialism and Catholicism in Vietnam, queerness in the 1930s (in both France and Vietnam), and how our upbringings haunt us, are some of the themes it explores.

This isn't your typical three-act story. The intent seems to be to gradually add details that form a picture of Bình and the various people and places he lives with and comes across. It's an interesting construction, but it left me rather unsatisfied and wondering what the point was. Bình himself comes across as a cipher, keeping a psychological distance from his own life, including the parts of it that might otherwise elicit strong emotion from either himself or from me. I admired the construction of the machine, but a machine wasn't what I had come to see.

Another issue was the level of bloody events and body horror. Before we get much further, I have trouble with those things, but if I'm otherwise enjoying the story (i.e. City of the Lost, Gideon the Ninth) I can sit through them with only minor difficulty. Here they were depicted with a light hand, and at times added to that edifice of Bình's life that the narrative was constructing. But since I wasn't particularly enjoying the rest of the book, those parts ended up disgusting me and pushing me away without a corresponding reward of enjoyment to justify them.

I got about 2/3 of the way through The Book of Salt and, with very little regret, am DNFing it. I never particularly got in synch with its combination of bloodiness and bloodlessness. It's the first book since I started on Goodreads that I got far enough (more than halfway) to both rate and DNF, so congrats, The Book of Salt!

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate to admit it, but I tend to munch down books as if I had eaten a tray of Alice B. Toklas' famous brownies when The Book of Salt told from the viewpoint of Binh, GertrudeStein and Alice B. Toklas' gay Vietnamese chef should be savored slowly. I was impressed by the beauty of the writing and wonderful little vignettes about Stein and Toklas or as they were otherwise known "Lovey" and "Pussy." Here is the one in which he first meets them:

I remember that on the day that I was hired GertrudeStein was present for my first discussion with Miss Toklas about the menus for the coming week. That conversation took place then, as it does now, in the kitchen. GertrudeStein, I now know, never goes into the kitchen. She must have sensed the potential in me from the very beginning. I wanted that afternoon to ask Miss Toklas whether the household budget would allow for the purchase of two pineapples for a dinner to which my Mesdames had invited two guests. I wanted to tell her that I would cut the first pineapple into paper-thin rounds and sauté them with shallots and slices of beef; that the sugar in the pineapple would caramelize during cooking, imparting a faint smokiness that is addictive; that the dish is a refined variation on my mother’s favorite. I wanted to tell her that I would cut the second pineapple into bite-sized pieces, soak them in kirsch, makethem into a drunken bed for spoonfuls of tangerine sorbet; that I would pipe unsweetened cream around the edges, a ring of ivory-colored rosettes. And because I am vain and want nothing more than to hear the eruption of praises that I can provoke, I wanted to tell her that I would scatter on top the petals of candied violets, their sugar crystals sparkling. “Madame, I want to buy a pear . . . not a pear.” Miss Toklas looked at me, recognition absent from her eyes. I, yes, lost the French word for “pineapple” the moment I opened my mouth. Departing at their will, the words of this language mock me with their impromptu absences. When I am alone, they offer themselves to me, loose change in a shallow pocket, but as soon as I reach for one I spill the others. This has happened to me many times before. At least I now know what to do, I thought. I repeated my question, but this time I had my hands on top of my head, with only the bottom of my palms touching my hair. My fingers were spread like two erect, partially opened fans. Complete with my crown, I stood in front of my new Madame and Madame the embodiment of “a-pear-not-a-pear.” I remember seeing GertrudeStein smile. Already, my Madame was amusing herself with my French. She was wrapping my words around her tongue, saving them for a later, more careful study of their mutations.

The story of Binh's life and how he arrived in Paris and in the employ of the famous duo, is not in any way told in chronological order or in concise terms but a meandering stream of consciousness journey through food and tastes and smells, exchanges with random people, walks through market places, and sea voyages.

Looking back on it, I am glad I was able to manage my gluttonous greed and read and enjoy the pleasures of this book, with it's wonderful food, vignettes and meandering storyline.

[morbidflight · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's distinctly a debut novel. You can tell it's written in a state of transition, whether that's from poetry or from short stories to novels. The writing comes and goes in spurts, and no single story strand ever appears long enough to pick out a delicate pattern. It's just a mass of tangled threads at the end. But somehow the underlying fabric remains steady, and you're pulled through the narrative without meaning to be.

The narrator, supposedly complex, is more a collection of traits than an individual. It's easy, almost too easy, to slip your conception of yourself in the clothes that hang too loose on Binh (that's what he's called, even if it's not his name). His history becomes yours, his desires become yours, and slowly, your impressions of last Tuesday's dinner creep into the story, and your memories of genius become intertwined with the portrayals in the prose, and your desire for a home becomes more important than anything Truong underscores. Your deficiencies, and your strengths, give Binh a body. He is nameless, transient, easily overpowered by reality.
And I'm not certain that this is a bad thing. Unintentionally or intentionally, this sublimation of the individual through the prose echoes the sublimation of the individual through language, which echoes the sublimation of the individual through colonialism. I'm leaning favorably towards this reverberation.

The ease by which all these flashing threads dazzle their way across the narrative, never quite settling down or allowing another to take center stage, makes this a fast read. It's a haphazard stream-of-consciousness, and that's not redundant. It's not stream-of-consciousness in that all thoughts just expel themselves onto the page. Binh's thoughts are still sheltered. But we read them, as if we were reading his face, as he remembers desire. The memories integrate themselves into our own consciousness so subtly that we're never sure if we're recalling his home, or ours. It doesn't matter. Neither of us has one.

I loved reading this. I'm not sure if I loved digesting it, though. It packs a punch, without touching.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book became magical for me. In the beginning, the feelings of disjointedness and alienation experienced by our narrator and made real by the style of the narration left me confused and disquieted. As his years of service with Madame and Madame continued, I felt the style becoming less contrived and I was more able to identify with him. I didn't know much about Gertrude Stein really (she's the one with the fish and the bicycle, right?) but this rang true for me in its description of her life and her home. I really liked Alice and I hope she really was like that in life. By far, my favorite bits were the many eloquent and elaborate descriptions of food preparation. I loved the ending.

I felt really lucky for the life that I live while reading this book. Imagine being the only person around who speaks your language. I also felt sad a lot of the time. The poverty, hopelessness, and helplessness was just terrible to witness. Especially when reading about the kids. I also felt disturbed by the scenes regarding homosexuality and the reactions of many of the characters.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Naomi lent me this book a couple months ago while she was very homesick for Paris. I took advantage of today's awful weather to sit inside and read it. I can see how some could read it and not quite remember much about the book. One seems to glide in and out of scenes (Vietnam, somewhere in the middle of the ocean, Paris) with total ease. It's amazingly sensual. Descriptions of cooking and eating are as visceral as the descriptions of the books' lovers. I have really enjoyed reading this book and I have yet to even mention the silly pleasure of reading about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas.

Yet this book is almost too well-written. The character's conflicts seem to never jam the work of the book. It makes me realize how much I love flaws in works. This seems so seamless. You wonder what the author will do next. Hopefully something a little more messy.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written story about a gay Vietnamese cook, Binh, who goes to work for Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas in Paris. It is, basically, a plotless story that tells the reader about the interactions between the Stein's and their friends, as well as, the cooks relation with them. The story weaves in and out of the present and past to tell about the life of Binh in Vietnam and Paris. Monique Truong's writing was exceptional.