The Book of Salt

The Book of Salt is a 2003 novel by Monique Truong. The time period is the 1920s and 1930s and focuses on Binh, a young, gay Vietnamese cook living in French-colonized Vietnam who must flee Saigon. After spending time at sea as a cook, he lands in Paris and eventually answers an ad for a position in the household of Gertrude Stein and her lover/companion, Alice B. Toklas. The fictionalized account of the couple is based on a real-life mention in Toklas’s cookbook about two Indochinese cooks, one of whom answered a classified ad for the position.

Binh—which is not the character’s real name, which we never learn—has had to escape Vietnam due to his affair with a French chef. While it wasn’t Binh’s sexual orientation that precipitated his dismissal from the Governor-General’s household, it was the impropriety of an affair, and that it was interracial and with someone who was of a higher social class than himself. However, it was the homosexual nature of the relationship that caused Binh’s father to disown him and throw him out. Binh continues to grapple with his cruel father’s taunts as imagined conversations between himself and the “Old Man.” He is given a red pouch of money by his long-suffering, loving mother who shares a special bond with Binh.

Binh meets a mysterious man on a bridge whom we later learn is actually a young Ho Chi Minh. Minh inspires Binh to stay on in Paris, hoping always to see the enigmatic man once more. Binh falls in love with Dr. Marcus Lattimore, one of the many regular visitors to the Stein home. Lattimore is a mixed-race American who speaks both English and French, and passes for white most the time. He is a quack doctor and tells people about their health by looking at the irises of their eyes.

Lattimore, a devotee of Stein’s, coerces Binh to take steal one of Stein’s many manuscripts, which are stored in a cabinet. Lattimore convinces Binh to do it by promising to have a photo taken of the two men together. The notebook he takes is titled The Book of Salt, and is about Binh, Lattimore says.

Binh navigates the limitations of colonialism while exploring his emerging identity during a time of unusual freedom and creativity in Paris. The Lost Generation was a famed group of writers and artists that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and EE Cummings. Stein’s home becomes a magnet for such luminaries and their hangers-on. Binh observes the cast of characters who come and go while cooking for Stein, Toklas, and their guests.

Binh has the opportunity to go to America with his employers, who are being treated as celebrities as they disembark for their home. However, he receives a letter from his eldest brother, Anh Minh, a sous chef in the Governor-General's home. Anh Minh informs Binh their father is dying (Binh had assumed him already dead) and that their mother has already passed away. Anh Minh urges Binh to return home to see their father.

Binh must decide what he should do: return to Vietnam or stay in Paris. He struggles with emotions throughout the book, as shown in his imagined arguments and blistering commentary from his father, as well as his habit of self-mutilation and heavy drinking.