In this slim novel, there are some lovely passages that evoke a forlorn loneliness, and the writing about food is quite sensual, depicted in what is often sumptuously poetic prose. But far too often, I longed for Monique Truong to have her narrator speak more clearly to the heart of the matter, rather than allude to the outskirts of what may or may not be happening. So while I was more or less caught in its heady spell from an aesthetic point of view, I needed more clarity of incident, dialogue, and moment-to-moment emotional truth.

It’s still an interesting glimpse into the life of a character unusual in the literature I’ve read: a Vietnamese personal chef who’s emigrated under difficult personal circumstances to Paris, and winds up working for the famous lesbian couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Ultimately, though, to pay homage to the devices employed by Truong, while ingredients were strong, the reading experience did not coalesce into a fully satisfying meal for me.

Very hard to get into this book; first half was a bit of a slog. Writing is abstruse; whether intentionally or not, I don't know. However, as the connections between characters and storylines piled up, I became more engaged. Found myself thinking about the book long after finishing. Glad I stuck it out.

*4.5 stars*
Read for my queer lit class, and wow. This is one of the most well-written books I may have ever read. I was simply enchanted by the writing style, I drowned in its poetic lyricism. I also think it’s exploring so many philosophical concepts, and thematizing many fascinating things. I can see why this may not be for everyone because admittedly, it can be a mess at times, but I really enjoyed it in spite of its stumbling.

I feel like two stars is too generous, but one star is too harsh for an author who clearly knows how to write but doesn't know when to stop or edit.
The book for me only really becomes cloyingly annoying at the start of ch. 18 when the narrator begins comparing his mother's strength to a bamboo tree. The rest of the book shoud just not have been written in my opionon. The description on the bird dying as a symbol for his own mother's death is trite. Furthermore Truong does not leave it up to the reader to make these parallels or assumptions that the mother has died but must spell everything out repeatedly. For a book with so many cooking references the author does not appreciate subtlety and the notion that "less is more". But not to be too negative there were some descriptions in this book that were quite lovely and well described. I also thought the premise of the book an interesting one.

This book is driving me crazy. The premise is very interesting; Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas hire a gay Vietnamese cook and the story is his view of his own life and their's in Paris. But beyond the premise, and layer after layer of pretty language, there's nothing. There is absolutely no story, whatsoever. There are virtually no scenes whatsoever, just page after page of densely written summary filled with figurative language and aimless musings on life and love and so on and so on. There are numerous requisite reminders that This Book is About Race and Class and Sexuality, but there isn't a single insight beyond, "Sometimes people are racist. Sometimes people are homophobes. Isn't that a shame." There's nice writing on every page, and some of the chapters weave an idea through from the beginning, disappearing and reappearing at the end to form a nice complete loop of thought. But the narrator never feels like a gay man, always like a young woman imagining a gay man, and the two Madames have almost zero presence in the story. There's no insight into them as characters or women, or historical figures. The narrator reminds us that he's tormented by his sense of guilt and shame towards his macho father, but his father never for even a moment transcends the easiest, cheapest single dimension of insecure macho villain, and the narrator never actually seems tormented. It feels like the diary of a smart woman who likes to write. But that is very, very different from a novel. I lost my place while reading on the bus this morning, and flipping through pages, I had absolutely NO idea if I was ahead or behind of m place in the book, if I was seeing something I hadn't read yet or not.

A fictional story of Binh, a Vietnamese man who is a cook to two real people in the 1930’s – Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.

Stein ruled the roost by her presence, but Toklas did all the heavy lifting. Toklas typed, edited and proofread all of Stein’s work. She handled schedules, was the bouncer for unwanted guests, ran the household, did the hiring and firing of staff and personally cooked for Gertrude on Sunday, the cook’s day off.



But it’s not a biography of Stein and Toklas with the cook serving as informant about the visiting bigwigs, who are almost never mentioned by name. Yet we do learn quite a bit about the two women, the most tell-tale phrase I thought was this: “They were both in love with Gertrude Stein.” Their guests called them “The Steins” behind their backs. They cultivated photographers.

But this story is his, not theirs. He was their cook for several years and at one time in the story, 1934, we are told that Stein was 60 and Toklas 57. His story is told in bit and pieces of reminiscences, so we learn about Binh’s pre-Paris life little by little and not in chronological order.

We learn of his nasty, domineering Catholic father who treated his wife and children as animals. We read of Binh’s loss of his job as a kitchen helper in Vietnam, his few years as a cook aboard freighters, his hopping ship upon his arrival in France, his thoughts in the kitchen, his observations of ‘The Steins,’ (he thinks of them as “My Mesdames”) and his love life on his days off.



Binh is gay. His employers know that (they are both gay) but they don’t know that at one point, his ‘Sweet Sunday Man’ is one of their guests. They leave Paris each year for a country estate in Bilignin (in eastern France near Switzerland and Italy). He is the first Asian person that many in the rural area have ever seen. The ghost of his father is constantly with him, criticizing and demeaning him. His father was disgusted with him when he leaned of his son’s sexual orientation.

Food is a major theme in the book, but, although we get enough detail on occasion to form a ‘recipe,’ that’s not the point. We get almost philosophical discourses on what it means to serve someone fried eggs vs. an omelet or the dirt behind the scenes of stellar chefs. Imagine the intimacy of cooking for someone for several years.

Binh drinks: he tipples in the kitchen; his employers know it and allow it and he drinks to excess at times. There is mention of Prohibition on-going in the USA and it had never occurred to me to wonder “What did the French or other Europeans make of America banning alcohol?” LOL

The title refers to the varieties of salt: from the kitchen, sweat, tears, or the sea?

There is good writing and a lot of remarkable insight into human nature:

“All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty.”

The cook-wanted ad in the newspaper that Binh responded to read: “Two American ladies wish…” “Of course, two American ladies in Paris these days would only ‘wish’ because to wish is to receive. To want, well, to want is just not American.”

“Most Parisians can ignore and even forgive me for not having the refinement to be born amidst the ringing bells of their cathedrals, especially since I was born instead amidst the ringing bells of the replicas of their cathedrals, erected in a far-off colony to remind them of the majesty, the piety of home.”

“Worse, Leo [Stein’s brother in Paris] had allowed his interest in other people’s art to surpass their interest in his.”

Gertrude Stein’s salon attracted a regular crowd of amazingly talented writers and artists: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Sinclair Lewis, Picasso, Matisse, Rousseau. But these individuals are not mentioned by the chef. The story is fiction although Stein and Toklas did at times have ‘Indochinese’ chefs. (Although that telling colonial term does not even make a distinction among Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotians, etc.)



The author, Monique Truong, was born in Saigon in 1968 and came to the U.S. as a refugee when she was six years old. The Book of Salt was her first novel. I thought it was an excellent read although I may be an outlier. I should say it has a relatively low rating on GR of 3.5. Yet it was a New York Times Notable Book and a national bestseller. It won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the Asian American Literary Award. All this considered I highly recommend it.

Top photo: Gertrude Stein (r) and Alice Toklas from from alchetron.com
The residence of Gertrude Stein at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris from washburn.edu/reference/awp/stein2.jpg
The author from thefamouspeople.com/profiles

Really beautifully written and tragic. I loved the narrator's voice and story.

It is strange, while reading the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I needed a book of fiction based in Paris for a book club challenge. I picked The Book of Salt from a list without really knowing what it was about. Imagine my surprise when I learned it was the later (fictional) history I was reading about in the autobiography..although, this time the focus was based not on Gertrude Stein, but on her cook. A very poetic read.

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 cite any specific examples; all I can say for sure is that I would not recommend this book.

In The Book of Salt, Monique Truong portrays a unique view of Paris in the 1920s. The protagonist, Binh, is a Vietnamese chef working for Gertrude Stein. Truong's writing does not stick to one particular timeline and often jumps between different moments in Binh. In this way, the story is told piece by piece, until the whole picture is made. One consistent element throughout the book is Binh's encounter's with men, whether in Paris or in his hometown Saigon. These multiple relationships all affect each other in different ways and feed into the other elements of the story. Truong also uses the memories of the protagonist's father as an inner conflict, and sometimes the two characters actually debate within the mind of Binh. This particular element made me want to read more from the book because I felt that it was extremely well written and comments from the Old Man shows how Binh's past affects his future. I enjoyed reading this book because I felt I learned a lot not only about this time period but also about Gertrude Stein as a historical figure.

4 stars to the second half of the book, 2 stars to the first half; glad I kept reading because it got way more interesting later on.

A beautifully written story about a gay Vietnamese cook, Binh, who goes to work for Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas in Paris. It is, basically, a plotless story that tells the reader about the interactions between the Stein's and their friends, as well as, the cooks relation with them. The story weaves in and out of the present and past to tell about the life of Binh in Vietnam and Paris. Monique Truong's writing was exceptional.