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It's time for a great summer read! This month (July 2006) we'll be reading and discussing THE BOOK OF SALT by MONIQUE TRUONG.
Here's the official description:
The Book of Salt serves up a wholly original take on Paris in the 1930s through the eyes of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh's youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.
MONIQUE TRUONG was born in Saigon in 1968 and moved to the United States at age six. She graduated from Yale University and the Columbia University School of Law, going on to specialize in intellectual property. Truong coedited the anthology Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, and her essay "'Welcome to America"' was featured on National Public Radio. Granting her an award of excellence, the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State University called her "'a pioneer in the field, as an academic, an advocate, and an artist."' She was awarded a prestigious Lannan Foundation writing residency in 2001.
You can buy it online at Women & Children First -- and if you use this link, part of the proceeds will benefit CNW: http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com/NA … 0618446885
If you've already read it, feel free to jump in and let us know what you thought, what kind of ideas & questions it provoked, and whether you'd recommend it to a friend. If you haven't read it yet, join us in reading it together! We'll be talking about it here all June. More discussion questions to come soon...
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Oh, wow, I loved this book! I was at the CNW event with Monique when it came out -- the writing itself is so delicious it practically made me cry. Plus I really like what she does with the idea the outsider/insider dichotomy.
Just thinking about the food descriptions is making me hungry. Must go eat something now...
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There were parts of this book I really enjoyed, and yet I wasn't in love with the book. I felt pity for Bihn rather than compassion. It seemed so sad to me that he couldn't get himself out of his misery. I loved the contrast between how eloquent he was with his thoughts in his head versus how difficult it was for him to communicate in his chosen foreign land. I also thought it was very interesting that he would cut himself to remind himself he was alive and that he enjoyed some of his blood being mixed into the food he served. With the stories he told of what other chefs did, it made me quite hesitant to go to a restaurant again. I also felt the author sometimes was too verbose towards the latter half, but all in all did an admirable job. I love the originality of the story. There's an excellent interview of the author available at www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.
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