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Apr 11, 2011

Whitaker rated it:

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,

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24 comments like (21 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2007

Suzy rated it:

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!

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2007

Andrew rated it:

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.

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2007

Phillip rated it:

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 perspe More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2007

Sierra rated it:

This book made me want to cook a humongous meal and gorge myself, even though I can't cook my way out of paper bag. Monique Truong's descriptions of food are sensual, but not in the massage kind of way. When she talks about mangoes, it's as though it's a really hot day and you've just plunged your sweaty face into a big bowl of freshly cut mango and shaved ice- that kind of sensual. The book's overarching conceit is also really interesting; its narrator is Anh Binh, a Vietnamese expatriate wh More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2007

Lauren rated it:

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 th More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 05, 2008

Amy rated it:

I initially picked this book up because I'd been hearing good things about another title - Salt: A World History - so I kind of had salt on the brain.

This book - The Book of Salt - left me very unsatisfied. I don't have a particularly good recollection of why, as I read it several years ago - I just remember some vague thoughts that the writing was not very good, and for some reason I didn't really warm up to Bin (I believe that's how his name was spelled). Unfortunately, I can't cit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2008

Kate rated it:

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 t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 02, 2008

Antof9 rated it:

I was 3/4 of the way through this when I took a phone call from a friend and was trying to explain to her why I didn't like it. "You just don't love the dykes," she said (nice). "Actually," I said, "there's not enough about the dykes in this book for me to know if I like them or not!"

... and I realized the problem -- this book isn't about "GertrudeStein" (LOL!) and Alice Toklas; it's not about the chef; it's not about cooking; it's not about More...

2 comments like

Jun 08, 2011

Tocotin rated it:

Wow, I liked this! Maybe it has something to do with a big surprise I got when I began reading: the main character is gay and his sexual orientation is important the book, and it's subtly written but very suggestive, and the character is sincere and strong, and refuses to feel sorry for himself despite troubles his love life lands him in. I was happy, really happy about this.

The story is told from the point of view of Binh, a 26-year-old Vietnamese who lives in Paris with Gertrude St More...

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Aug 26, 2009

Ayse rated it:

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 t More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Molly rated it:

Such a brilliant premise for a book--Truong, based on a few lines from Toklas' real cookbook, imagines what it would be like to be the Vietnamese cook/servant to the famous ex-patriot couple Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas in Paris. The story intertwines the difficult life of Binh (the homosexual Vietnamese servant) with the glamourous & hilarious lives of the Steins. This book revolves around reconciling traditional cultures with that culture's ever-changing future. Painful and wonderful.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 03, 2011

Dana added it

There are books that I know are too sophisticated for me and this is one of them. This book is so perfect, so full of poetic, gorgeous phrasing, that it's unreadable to me. I read some pages aloud, accompanied by sublime cups of jasmine and oolong paired with lychee fruit in china that matched the color of the book cover, but I couldn't continue reading after the cups were empty, the flesh of the lychee stripped from the nut. My intrigue in the words and the story lasted only a few cups of te More...

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Jul 07, 2008

Margaret rated it:

The Book of Salt contains too many stories and too many
loose ends. The narrator is a gay Vietnamese cook hired by Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein for their Paris kitchen.
One sympathsizes with the cook in a country not his own, but
one doesn't really care because Truong doesn't tell enough.
For more information on Toklas and Stein,try Hemingway's A
Moveable Feast or Stein's own Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.
My bookgroup shared my sentiments.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 21, 2011

Cow rated it:

The book was interesting. A very strange combination of interesting and intensely boring; it was a bit of a slog, but I had a six-hour train ride and nothing else to read, so...

The back cover notes that it's a "take on Paris in the 1930s through the eyes of Bình, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas." It's also worth noting here, since it isn't on the back cover, that Bình, too, is gay. As such, the book really spends a lot of time looking at c More...

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Aug 08, 2009

Bookshop rated it:

Like so many, I thought it was a book about food. Paris, Gertrude Stein, Vietnamese cook. What's not to like? I find review excerpts on the back cover misleading as it is full of food-related phrases such as:
"... cooks up a story of...";
"...writes about food... ";
"... to be savoured...",
"A rich, poetic feast...";
"... different foodstuffs... so articulately and emotively described."

Instead of food More...

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Sep 27, 2010

Ellen rated it:

Amazing book. The whole book is told through the emotions of the man who is eventually hired to cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I'm not sure I can articulate why this book is so deep, but I think it is because the narrator mythologizes his own very difficult life so the reader can see how he survives what should be unsurvivable and how he takes beauty from what,as a whole is not beautiful. The obvious and extreme extent to which the narrator is exploited (because of the combination More...

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Aug 21, 2010

Iahc rated it:

I loved this book so much that I only allowed myself to read one chapter per day. I wanted to savor its luscious prose, its wonderful observations, its wry wit. I was sorry when it ended. The story? Let's just say a mysterious young Vietnamese man in Paris is hired by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas to be their cook. Little by little, as the man who calls himself "Binh" gets used to his new life in Paris and his eccentric employers, we learn more about his past in colonial-era Vietn More...

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Dec 12, 2008

MD rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 23, 2007

Erin rated it:

Written from the point of view of Gertrude Stein's and Alice B. Toklas' (fictional) Vietnamese cook, this book is one to savor. Though it can be slow-moving because of its flashbacks and sometimes dense prose, it's a nice read, its writing elegant, its humor and drama subtle.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

C(h)ristine rated it:

I read this while at Hedgebrook. She wrote part of this while staying in the same cottage. I could feel the rhythm of the same environment in the part about the mother (the part she wrote there). The rain fell on the roof, same as it did in the narrative, it was an eerie experience.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2011

Miyuki rated it:

This is a shining example of how studying a book can add to the enjoyment. I loved this novel. The beautiful and sometimes delicious prose made it an easy read. The stream of consciousness isn't for everyone, I recognize. Many of the complaints I have read in reviews are things that are arguably deliberate and while I will not write an essay here addressing each one of them, I will just say I am thankful for being able to study this book and add a diverse array of perspectives to this novel.
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Apr 14, 2009

Lcbogota rated it:

Binh, the Vietnamese cook working for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, tells the story of his life and family in Vietnam, and his experience as a ship's cook, and his existence working as a private chef in Paris. It is a story about living and writing one's own history. Binh shares his story with the reader, a combination of fact and fabrication, delicately weaving the fabric of his life so that he can cover himself and survive in a world that has always been hostile and foreign, no matter wh More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Joanna rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2011

Tom rated it:

At times I found myself tremendously engaged, and at other times I struggled through the narrative. The lack of plot and characterization that seems to bother some reviewers doesn't actually bother me. I get the feeling that the lack actually squares quite well with Truong's project, which is more of a meditation than a traditional narrative. Instead it was that sometimes Truong's style simply becomes insufferable: too breathy, too overtly sensual. Truong seems to withhold for the sake of withho More...

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Mar 03, 2009

Lynne-marie rated it:

I read this book almost in one sitting, unable to put it down, utterly disinclined to part with it for even a moment. The melange that is Binh, living on the left bank, cooking for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, would be enough for an astonishing book, but Troung then adds in the elements of a love of cooking, living an alien life in Paris, and the cruelty . . . wait I don't want this to be a spoiler. I'll stop here and say the emotional side is as exceptionally well-developed as the mean More...

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Dec 05, 2009

Ivan rated it:

This is a hauntingly beautiful story of Binh, an Indochinese world traveler (and world class chef) who ends up in the Paris home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. This is NOT a story about food or grand cooking anymore than "The Grapes of Wrath" was about picking vegitables.

This is a richly drawn character study. I found the story compelling and colorful and poignant. Binh's interactions with the two ladies is priceless. The scenes between him and his family - especia More...

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Jun 05, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

Having read and LOVED Bitter in the Mouth, I was all excited to read this book, which is Truong's debut novel. Sadly, it was very disappointing for me.
Binh, the chef for Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas in the early 1930's, is a man trying to find his place in life and struggling with the decision of going home to Vietnam or continuing his travels. Written in the first person, I found his train of thought confusing, hard to follow, misleading, and to be constantly digressing. More...

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Dec 31, 2008

Beth rated it:

This book is inspired by a mention in "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" of two Vietnamese men who cooked for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. There are some lovely descriptions of the sensual experience of food and cooking. The author also explores many interesting relationships in the book, including: between domestic servants and their masters, between colonial powers (France) and the countries upon which they exert their cultural influences (Vietnam), and between creative geniuses More...

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Sep 30, 2010

Alexis rated it:

A beautifully written book - prose-like writing and descriptive to the point that I could picture, taste, and smell almost everything described. This book made me mouth-wateringly hungry more than once. And after falling in love with Paris, it was nice to revisit it through the pages, though he's not outside nearly enough. All in all, very interesting story, but a little confusing at times. I believe it's the first novel from this author and an ambitious, complicated one at that, just got a More...

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