Bitter in the Mouth by Monique TruongRandom House, 2010

I read and loved Monique Truong’s first novel, The Book of Salt, back in 2004, so I was excited to hear that she had a new novel out this year. The narrator of this one, Linda Hammerick, is a quirky person from a quirky family, which could be annoying but which I found pretty charming. Take, for example, this passage in the first chapter about her great-uncle, who used to be a librarian.

At work his methodology was conventional and efficient, but that wasn’t the case in his own home. His books were shelved in alphabetical order but not by titles. A for “Acerbic,” B for “Buy Another Copy as Gift,” C for “Cow Dung, as in This Stinks,” D for “Devastating,” E for “Explore Further,” F for “Foreign” (foreign meant that my great-uncle couldn’t related to the characters in the book, not that the author was from another country) and so on. He would explain the system to me and give me typewritten pages identifying all twenty-six categories. (8)

We learn early in the book that Linda has lexical-gustatory synesthesia: she tastes words when she hears them. Not all words, but most words, and not always an exact food or flavor, though sometimes. In the text, this is semi-jarringly/semi-pleasingly rendered as italics whenever there’s dialogue, like: “Lindamint, I knowgrapejelly she’s been reallypopcorn looking forTriscuitward to your visit” (234). Linda’s synesthesia her “secret sense,” one form of other-ness, though not the only one. In many ways, this book is a typical coming-of-age novel, a girl leaving home (a small town in North Carolina) and then learning about herself and her family after she’s left it, but it’s lyrical and lovely and really satisfying. I loved passages like this one, where Linda’s talking about how her father used to tell her bedtime stories:

After a week’s worth of failed fairy tales—stories that made my eyelids flutter open and not shut—my father tried telling me stories that belonged only to him. Thomas told me of an island off the coast of a different world. On this island, there stood a city whose buildings were made of glass. He told me that at the heart of this city was a forest with trees, ponds and a lake, swans and horses, and even a small castle. He told me that the streets of the city were filled with bright yellow cars that you hopped in and out of at will and that would take you wherever you wanted to go. In this city, there were sidewalks overflowing with people from the whole world over who wanted so much to be there. He told me of its neighborhoods, with names like Greenwich Village and Harlem and Chinatown. At the nucleus of these stories was my father, and spinning around him was the city of New York. Long before I would see them in photographs or in real life, my father had given me the white crown lights of the Chrysler Building and the shining needle of the Empire State. (175)

This book was good company on a sick-day Monday, spent alternately napping and sitting wrapped up in blankets and reading while elevating and sometimes icing my knee. (Dear body: what’s up? Could you please be a little less frustrating? Friday: low fever, felt like I was getting a cold, went to work but didn’t go to trapeze class, and a long hot bath and tons of sleep Friday night/Saturday morning seemed to keep the cold from ever coming to fruition. Saturday and Sunday: felt better but not great, and ow, random knee pain. Monday: ow, more knee pain, to the point where bending it enough to get dressed was painful and I worried about all the stairs on my commute.) This book was still good company on the train to and from work on Tuesday, and while waiting to vote on Tuesday afternoon, and with a mug of warm cider after dinner on Tuesday evening.