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A review by jwsg
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
3.0
The Book of Salt isn't normally the kind of book I'd pick up. Reading the blurb - that the Book of Salt is the story of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and how he "observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world" - made me fear that this would be another one of those cliched "Asian trying to find self in another country" tales. One of those tales that gains appeal by romanticizing and exoticizing the East with a Capital E. But I was intrigued when a friend of mine told me she loved this book and had devoured it in one sitting.
In a way, I was right. The Book of Salt pressed all the usual buttons, evoking the mysterious East with Binh's recollections of "sour sweat", rice, quinces. Sentences like: "I am an Indochinese laborer, generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same. 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.
The Book of Salt does try to add a new spin to the identity tale. We learn that The Book of Salt isn't just about a young man trying to find himself in a foreign land. As we read on and piece together the various snippets of Binh's life in Vietnam that he chooses to reveal, we learn why Binh left home. We learn about Binh's trick to coping with emptiness, what he does to feel alive. And there are some lovely bits of prose in the book, some lovely metaphors, like when Binh meditates on the nature of love:
"Quinces are ripe, GetrudeStein, 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 cora 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-ripened papayas, a color 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"
It is these lovely bits of prose scattered about the book that kept me going. The Book of Salt was, on the whole, an entertaining enough read. But to call it magical, extraordinary and fascinating - as some of the reviews did - might be overreaching it a little.
In a way, I was right. The Book of Salt pressed all the usual buttons, evoking the mysterious East with Binh's recollections of "sour sweat", rice, quinces. Sentences like: "I am an Indochinese laborer, generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same. 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.
The Book of Salt does try to add a new spin to the identity tale. We learn that The Book of Salt isn't just about a young man trying to find himself in a foreign land. As we read on and piece together the various snippets of Binh's life in Vietnam that he chooses to reveal, we learn why Binh left home. We learn about Binh's trick to coping with emptiness, what he does to feel alive. And there are some lovely bits of prose in the book, some lovely metaphors, like when Binh meditates on the nature of love:
"Quinces are ripe, GetrudeStein, 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 cora 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-ripened papayas, a color 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"
It is these lovely bits of prose scattered about the book that kept me going. The Book of Salt was, on the whole, an entertaining enough read. But to call it magical, extraordinary and fascinating - as some of the reviews did - might be overreaching it a little.