Bitter in the Mouth
Monique Truong, Random, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6908-8
Linda Hammerick has a special yet burdensome gift--she experiences words as tastes. Linda's boyfriends' names, for example, remind her of orange sherbet and parsnips; her own name is mint-flavored. Depending on the speaker, listening, for Linda, can be delicious or distasteful. In the first part of the book, Linda interacts with her family: she dances with her eccentric uncle Baby Harper, whose sing-song voice limits her "tasting his words"; she faced off with her acerbic grandmother, Iris; deals with her adored father, Thomas, and her unsympathetic mother, Deanne, whose infatuation with a neighborhood boy leaves Linda vulnerable to his predatory advances. Woven into Linda's story is the history of her home state, North Carolina—slaveholding days, the first airplane flight, and local Indian lore. But when a sudden tragedy brings Linda back home from New York City, she finds answers to a life that has been made up of half-finished sentences, as the secret of her origins and the clandestine histories of those around her are revealed one by one. Truong's (Book of Salt) mesmerizing prose beautifully captures Linda's taste-saturated world, and her portrait of a broken family's secretive pockets and genuine moments of connection is affecting. (Aug)
Details
Reviewed on: 06/21/2010
Genre: Fiction
Downloadable Audio - 978-1-4618-3223-2
Open Ebook - 185 pages - 978-0-679-60342-9
Open Ebook - 304 pages - 978-1-4464-9913-9
Paperback - 320 pages - 978-0-8129-8132-2