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.

I'm not sure why the author chose to make the famous real-life couple of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas important secondary characters in this book about a Vietnamese cook. It really only served as a distraction, when she could easily have used a fictional couple.

There was a lot about this book that annoyed me. There's no real story, just a rambling set of recollections and events narrated in first person by the cook, styled as if he is confiding in his lover. This telling jumps around in time and place, from paragraph to paragraph, making it hard to follow. The continuous food metaphors become overbearing. I get it. Yes, yes, I get it.

And yet. The story is so full of emotions, of love and resentment and regret and longing and lust and hope and need and loneliness and resignation, that it is still a compelling read, for all its annoyances.

Paperback copy, bought secondhand on impulse when I was looking for another of this author's books.

Let's call my rating a 3.5 -- I was torn between 3 and 4 and decided to round up. This is an incredibly inspired work that brings our narrator Binh truly to life. His life has not been a happy one, but the traumas and tragedies are broken up by the stream of consciousness format and the occasionally moments of love (or at least loving sex) and food. Sometimes this worked beautifully, and sometimes it felt muddled and sapped of feeling.

I expected a little more creative license to be taken on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, but what was here was pretty in line with what we know of them. Not a complaint or praise, just something that surprised me.

Read slowly, savored, because because because (like a sob caught in my throat). The parts describing his struggle in acquiring a second language, and the methods by which he stretches his limited vocab to suit his needs, were excellent. I'm struggling through span102 right now, and it's frustrating to know that no one will hear me in Spanish and think I'm charming. Everyone wants a scholar-prince, but if you have a heart, men will hurt you. Again and again. Without malice.

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.

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 Stein and Alice B. Toklas as their cook. (I've read somewhere that they really had two "Indochinese" cooks.) He observes the two ladies and their (predominantly male) guests and admirers, although it must be said that these observations are very sparse. The reader is constantly told about the genius of Gertrude Stein, the reverence she inspires and the fame which surrounds her, but not much of it is shown. The conversations cited are mostly of a household kind (food, shopping, vacations etc.). Actually, much more spotlight is given to Binh's private life, his adventures, the romance he has with a young American doctor, and the reminiscences of his family and his life in Vietnam. The Vietnam story line and the Paris one are in fact parallel, unraveling steadily till the very end of the book. I liked them both; I'm not a fan of the prevailing trend of interrupting the current story with backstories, but it's very well done in this book. Also, it was a good thing that Binh was not obsessed with the famous ladies (positively or negatively) and that more space was given to his own concerns and experiences. It was, after all, his story. And all the plots were connected very very skillfully.

What I also liked was the subtlety of it all. Racism, colonialism, bigotry, fanaticism, social injustices are all themes of this book, but they are introduced rather by the means of irony than of outright and plain condemnation. The main character is passionate and ironic at the same time, which is a great mix.

What I didn't like was... I don't know, sometimes the language was so lofty, ornate and ostentatiously snobbish that it not only weighed the story down, but made it unbelievable. The main character is not an educated man, apart from him being a chef. In fact it's not even explained how he had learned to read and write. There's nothing about the school or even his parents or older brothers teaching him. The only thing he reads is letters, notes and newspapers. Yet his language is one of an educated person and his thought processes show him as someone with interest in religion, philosophy, sociology, medicine and whatnot. The other thing I thought lacking was the descriptions of Saigon - there were almost none. I couldn't actually tell if his family was very poor or moderately well-to-do; I had no real feeling of the character of the city, or the people, or the General Governor's mansion. I only remember that it was hot.

But all in all, I read this book almost in one sitting and enjoyed it a lot. And all the food details were great.

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.

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.

The prose in this work really blew me away, especially when listening to it on audio. The nonlinear nature was hard to keep track of at first but once I was familiar with the story and the history if our character I really loved it. Such a fantastic literary historical fiction.

Salt, sweat, tears, and sea: these are the 4 salts that flavor the narrator's life. "Binh," (peace) is the name he's taken for himself, but it's a fantasy, a fake, a front...he is anything but peaceful.

He's from Vietnam in a time that it was called Indochina, and he learned the art of cooking at a very young age. It's hard work. When he had to leave his homeland, he floated on the sea for a very long time, finally landing in Paris, becoming the live-in cook for "Mesdames," GertrudeStein and Ms. Toklas.

The story, then, is of art and love and life in the most famous residence in the land and of love and betrayal in the most famous place for love in the world. It is a book about a cook, and it's written in language as lush as the recipes and intrigue that it shares.

4.5/5

n  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.n

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.

n  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.n

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.

n  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.n

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?

n  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.n

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.

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

fictional inside life of Gertrude Stein's & Alice B. Toklas's Vietnamese Cook who is the narrator and closeted gay male--