Have you read it?
A random find for me at the bookstore, which has turned out to be really great. It has quite possibly taken me the longest time to read this book than any other. Not because it's long, slow or uninteresting, but because it reads like poetry and I find myself wanting to savor each page.
The Book of Salt is the story of Binh, a Vietnamese cook in 1930s Paris, who is employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The tale takes us back to his youth in Saigon, his journey to Paris, life with his famous mesdames, and finding his place in the world.
A taste (chapter 3, page 22):
"This is a temple, not a home.
The thought - barely formed, fluid, just beginning to mingle with the faint smells introduced by the opening door - changes so quickly from prophecy to gospel that I am for a brief moment extricated from my body, made to stand beside myself, and allowed to swerve as a solemn eyewitness. Ordinarily, I am plagued, like the Old Man, with a slowness. In him, it was triggered by cowardice. In me, it is aggravated by carelessness. Ours is a hesitancy toward an act that is habitual and common to those around us: the forming of conclusions. We are, instead, weighted and heavied by decades of observations. We gather them, rags and remnants, and then have no needle and thread with which to sew them together. But once they are formed, ours become the thick, thorny coat of durian, a covering designed to forestall the odor of rot and decay deep inside."
An amazing first novel from Monique Truong, a former NYC attorney who gave it up to attend the Yaddo writers' colony and become an author. Her second novel is Bitter in the Mouth, published in August & next on my list.
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