3.5
Bitter in the Mouth
ByPublisher Description
Bitter in the Mouth is a brilliant, virtuosic novel about a young woman’s search for identity and the true meaning of family from the author of The Sweetest Fruits
“What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the prophetic last words that Linda Hammerick’s grandmother says to her. Growing up in small-town North Carolina in the 1970s and ’80s, Linda already knows that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. She can “taste” words. In this and in other ways, her body is a mystery to her. Linda’s awkward girlhood is nonetheless enlivened and emboldened by her dancing great-uncle Harper, and Kelly, her letter-writing best friend. Linda makes her way north to college and then to New York City, trying her best to leave her past behind her like “a pair of shoes that no longer fit.” But when a family tragedy compels her to return home, Linda uncovers the startling secrets of her past. Monique Truong’s acclaimed novel questions our assumptions about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected to and disconnected from our bodies, our histories, ourselves.
“What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the prophetic last words that Linda Hammerick’s grandmother says to her. Growing up in small-town North Carolina in the 1970s and ’80s, Linda already knows that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. She can “taste” words. In this and in other ways, her body is a mystery to her. Linda’s awkward girlhood is nonetheless enlivened and emboldened by her dancing great-uncle Harper, and Kelly, her letter-writing best friend. Linda makes her way north to college and then to New York City, trying her best to leave her past behind her like “a pair of shoes that no longer fit.” But when a family tragedy compels her to return home, Linda uncovers the startling secrets of her past. Monique Truong’s acclaimed novel questions our assumptions about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected to and disconnected from our bodies, our histories, ourselves.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBitter in the Mouth Reviews
3.5
“4 clams. The book was slow in places, and it often left me confused, but I think that it was necessary in order to fully understand the narrator’s story. It mirrored Linda’s own struggle with memory, identity, and the things no one wants to say out loud—especially growing up adopted and Asian in the South in the 70s and 80s. This book embodies the “show, don’t tell” approach very well, where meaning is hidden between silences, metaphors, and fragments of memory rather than spelled out directly.
I also appreciated the cultural and historical references woven throughout. Truong uses To Kill a Mockingbird as a touchstone, and you can feel how the classic Southern novel echoes in Linda’s own life as she grapples with what justice, family, and belonging mean for someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the town’s categories.”
About Monique Truong
Monique Truong was born in Saigon and currently lives in New York City. Her first novel, The Book of Salt, was a New York Times Notable Book. It won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the 7th Annual Asian American Literary Award, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Britain’s Guardian First Book Award. She is the recipient of the PEN American Robert Bingham Fellowship, and was awarded the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton for 2007-2008.
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