Book Review: Bitter in the Mouth

As soon as I finished reading Monique Truong’s new novel, I wanted to read it again. I had been working my way through Bitter in the Mouth for weeks, stealing time in the late evening after a long day of research and recipe development. It was a guilty pleasure as I sometimes stayed up way past my normal bedtime and would wake up groggy and bleary eyed.

But I couldn’t help it. I was hooked. In fact, Monique got me with her opening sentence, “I fell in love with my great-uncle Harper because he taught me how to dance.” Provocative, succinct, and rhythmic are the elements found in every  sentence of Bitter in the Mouth. On occasion, I would read pages aloud to my husband as he readied for bed. There’s syncopation in Monique’s prose that carries you from cover to cover. 

If you are not familiar with Monique Truong’s work, you ought to be. I don’t say that because she is among my Vietnamese-American ‘sistahs’ or a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. But the fact is that she’s an excellent novelist who weaves food, culture, and drama into her characters and plots.

She captivates your attention by getting you right inside her character’s brain. If you read her first novel, The Book of Salt, a best seller, you know what I’m talking about. She was a regular contributor to Gourmet and has a piece in the current October issue of Saveur.

In Bitter in the Mouth, Monique offers glimpses of her personal life -- growing up in the American South, going to school at Ivy League universities, and most importantly, trying to fit in. We all have felt alienated at some point in our lives. Monique has constructed a work that allows you to intimately share those emotions with her characters. It's an intelligent and funny novel that many readers can identify with.

Making Words Matter
The main character, Linda, suffers from synesthesia, an unusual disease that forcers her to experience life through tastes. Words have flavors, textures, and values. Monique developed a lexicon of foods to convey how Linda reacts to being the perennial geek and outsider. For example, the boy she has a childhood crush on is called ‘Wadeorangesherbert.’ When Linda uses the word ‘dumb’ it is presented as ‘dumbcannedspinach.’ 

Presenting words as such is visually and linguistically powerful. The first term got me thinking about the intrinsic qualities of orange sherbert -- it is soft, smooth and sweet, sweet and tart just like a big teenage crush. I also realized the idiocy of canned spinach; it is dumb. Try using 'Wadeorangesherbert' and 'dumbcannedspinach' in sentences to appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into Bitter in the Mouth.

The novel spans decades and Monique captures the cultural icons of the 1980s extremely well. If you were a teenager or young adult during those years, this novel will remind you of those times – in music, fashion, and food. You sense bits of yourself in her artful prose.

Linda's great-uncle Harper has an odd knack for taking photos of people but cutting off their heads. There's humor in that but also not because you are forced to narrowly focus your attention.

I was struck by that notion so at my husband's aunt's 90th birthday party, I took this photo of her manicured hands (blue pearl is the color). She passed away soon after the birthday. The photo speaks loudly about how she lived and died.

Monique spent years working on this novel and it is a pleasure to read. Each chapter is like a carefully wrapped gift. Untie the ribbon, undo the wrapping, and lift the lid. Then rustle through the layers of tissue to discover the treasures inside. Monique gifts us one chapter after another, until we find out the source of Lindamint’s bitterness.

Have you read Bitter in the Mouth or Book of Salt? Share your thoughts.