Bitter In The Mouth
  • Published: 15 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099474746
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $27.99

Bitter In The Mouth

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A beguilingly original Southern gothic family novel with a sharp and minty twist, by an acclaimed writer with a sensual, surprising imagination and a compelling way with words.

Growing up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the '70s and '80s, Linda Hammerick knows that she is different. She has strong, almost paralysing associations between words and tastes; she doesn't look like everyone else; and she isn't popular at school. She finds her way through life with the help of her great uncle 'Baby' Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend fat-thin-fat Kelly with whom she has been exchanging letters since they were seven. But then a tragedy and a revelation will make her question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.
  • Published: 15 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099474746
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $27.99
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About the author

Monique Truong

Monique Truong was born and raised in Vietnam, and moved to the US after the fall of Saigon. She was an intellectual property attorney in New York, but now devotes herself full-time to writing. Her short fiction and essays have been taught in universities across America. Her first novel was The Book of Salt.

portrait photo of Monique Truong

Also by Monique Truong

The Book of Salt
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Praise for Bitter In The Mouth

Monique Truong creates a world so subtle, mysterious, moving and sensory that it heightens our consciousness of those qualities in our own. Bitter in the Mouth is the rare novel that makes one life story unique and universal at the same time

Gloria Steinem

A revelation of wit and heart and stunning talent. Truong shades her classic coming of age tale with a magical ferocity that recalls Doctorow and Nabokov....a soulful hymn to the hands we fashion with the cards we're dealt

Jayne Anne Phillips

Be prepared for a full range of tastes of life in Bitter in the Mouth: friendship, loyalty, love, family, and above all, the mysteries at every corner of one's history that make us who we are. Monique Truong is a great observer and a beautiful writer

Yiyun Li

Southern cadences resonate, imbuing Bitter In The Mouth with a warmth and wit that form a perfect foil for the Southern gothic undercurrents that propel it towards its gorgeous, heart-warming resolution

Herald

Family secrets, first love and teen betrayals all make up the novel's classic menu

Independent

If you liked The Shaking Woman by Siri Hustvedt, you'll love Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong... a tale of friendship, loyalty, love, family, and above all, the mysteries that make us who we are

Tatler

A mouthwateringly delicious read; it also snaps with irresistible wit. This could have remained a slender coming-of-age tale. In fact, it develops into one of real substance

Daily Mail

With a heroine who literally eats words, Truong is amply aware of the power of them... she wields her narrative like a quarterstaff, knocking readers' expectations right out from under them

Washington Post

Piercingly eloquent...richly drawn characters...captivating pace

New York Times

Truong's pen is a scalpel, laying perfect words down along that nerve until even the happiest reader understands what it means to forever stand apart from your family and the larger society you inhabit...The novel's end is neither bitter nor sweet, but the perfect combination of both

Los Angeles Times