REVIEW: The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

Excerpt: The Book of Salt is a brilliant debut by a young Vietnamese American, Monique Truong. The novel will certainly place her as one of the brightest young stars on the American literary scene. In her novel, Truong uses the famous literary couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, as a background against which to tell her tale. Many details about the couple are known including the fact that they had in their employ, a young Vietnamese chef. Not much, however, is known about the chef. Truong creates instead a superb fiction narrative about him and the reasons for his forced displacement.

The rest of the review, originally published on March 31, 2003, can be found here.