Bitter in the Mouth A Novel

From Monique Truong, the bestselling and award-winning author ofThe Book of Salt, comes a brilliant, mesmerizing, beautifully written novel about a young womanrs"s search for identity and family, as she uncovers the secrets of her past and of history. Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70rs"s and 80rs"s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. "What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two" are the cruel, mysterious last words that Lindars"s grandmother ever says to her. Now in her thirties, Linda looks back at her past when she navigated her way through life with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily letters. The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word "disappoint," I tasted toast, slightly burnt. For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense-she can "taste" words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Lindars"s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past. Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family. Revelation is when God tells us the truth. Confession is when we tell it to him. This astonishing novel questions many assumptions-about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected and to be disconnected-from others and from the past, our bodies, our histories, and ourselves.

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.