Helpful Score: 1
First off, Monique Truong is a super talented author and I will happily look for more of her books. Unfortunately, The Book of Salt is filled with all three of my Sleepy Read Triggers: religion (Catholicism in particular), cooking minutiae (Babette's Feast, zzzzzzzzz), and magical realism.
The three main characters in this historical-fiction are Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and Binh, the Vietnamese cook they take in at their famed Paris Studio. In addition, there are a ton of other intriguing characters, narrator Binh's family members, former employers, love interests, and various men he meets on boats and bridges (most of whom seemed to be love interests, but I got too confused to say so for certain). None of these people were introduced in a chronological order, their stories were all layered and interrupted, and then re-introduced in a pseudo-rhythmic manner with various constant and repeated refrains - all of which I think was meant to reference GertrudeStein's non-linear style, but which did not really appeal to me personally.
The three main characters in this historical-fiction are Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and Binh, the Vietnamese cook they take in at their famed Paris Studio. In addition, there are a ton of other intriguing characters, narrator Binh's family members, former employers, love interests, and various men he meets on boats and bridges (most of whom seemed to be love interests, but I got too confused to say so for certain). None of these people were introduced in a chronological order, their stories were all layered and interrupted, and then re-introduced in a pseudo-rhythmic manner with various constant and repeated refrains - all of which I think was meant to reference GertrudeStein's non-linear style, but which did not really appeal to me personally.
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