Aust, US, Canada: migrant & native experiences; Films: The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong - Ebook

The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong - Ebook | Scribd

Start reading

Remove from Saved
Add to list

Download to app

Share

The Sweetest Fruits

By Monique Truong
318 pages
12 hours

Included in your membership!
at no additional cost

Description
With brilliant sensitivity and an unstinting eye, The Sweetest Fruits illuminates the women’s tenacity and their struggles in this novel that circumnavigates the globe in the search for love, family, home, and belonging.

Monique Truong gives voice to three women, Rosa, Alethea, and Setsu, who each tell the story of their life with Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), a globetrotting Greek-Irish writer best known as the author of America’s first Creole cookbook and for his many volumes about the folklore and ghost stories of Meiji Era Japan. An immigrant thrice over, Hearn is now remembered at best as a keen cultural observer and at worst as a purveyor of exotica.

In their own unorthodox ways, the three women are also intrepid travelers and explorers. Their accounts witness Hearn’s remarkable life but also seek to witness their own existence and luminous will to live unbounded by gender, race, and the mores of their time. Each is a gifted storyteller with her own precise reason for sharing her story, and together their voices offer a revealing, often contradictory portrait of Hearn.

‘It isn’t only the fantastic Lafcadio Hearn who springs to new life in these pages. The women around him do as well, even as they mix the extraordinary and the ordinary in an exhilarating new way. The Sweetest Fruits is brilliant and heartbreaking–I was transfixed.’ —Gish En, author of Typical American

‘Presented in four courses from the perspective of the women closest to him, The Sweetest Fruits is a feast you’ll want to devour for its arresting metaphors and its beautiful prose.’ —Anita Lo, author of Solo: A Modern Cookbook for One

‘Intimate and sensuous yet majestic in scope, The Sweetest Fruits is a rapturous, glorious novel, extraordinarily alive to the world.’ —Idra Novey, author Those Who Knew

‘Monique Truong has composed a sublime, many-voiced novel of voyage and reinvention. It will cross horizons, yet remain burrowed in your heart.’ —Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

‘By giving readers a concert of voices, at last singing louder than Hearn’s biography and mythology, Truong asks us to ponder the ways those who are often ignored and marginalized might have their own rich, epic stories worth telling. In that sense, The Sweetest Fruits is a type of justice.’ —Eric Nguyen, author of Diacritics

Historical Fiction
Biographical/AutoFiction
General Fiction
Contemporary Women's
All categories

Read on the Scribd mobile app
Download the free Scribd mobile app to read anytime, anywhere.
iOS
Android
PUBLISHER:
Black Inc. Books
RELEASED:
Aug 31, 2021
ISBN:
9781743822029
FORMAT:
Book

About the author
MTMonique Truong

Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of the bestselling, award-winning novels, The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. She’s also a former refugee, essayist, avid eater, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney (more or less in that order).

===

The Sweetest Fruits: A Novel Hardcover – September 3, 2019

by Monique Truong (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

See all formats and editions

Kindle

from AUD 24.98

Read with Our Free App

Hardcover

AUD 12.70

47 Used from AUD 2.45

9 New from AUD 9.54

7 Collectible from AUD 6.81

Paperback

AUD 9.09

13 Used from AUD 2.30

14 New from AUD 8.17

"A sublime, many-voiced novel of voyage and reinvention" (Anthony Marra)

"[Truong] imagines the extraordinary lives of three women who loved an extraordinary man [and] creates distinct, engaging voices for these women" (Kirkus Reviews)

A Greek woman tells of how she willed herself out of her father's cloistered house, married an Irish officer in the British Army, and came to Ireland with her two-year-old son in 1852, only to be forced to leave without him soon after. An African American woman, born into slavery on a Kentucky plantation, makes her way to Cincinnati after the Civil War to work as a boarding house cook, where in 1872 she meets and marries an up-and-coming newspaper reporter. In Matsue, Japan, in 1891, a former samurai's daughter is introduced to a newly arrived English teacher, and becomes the mother of his four children and his unsung literary collaborator.

The lives of writers can often best be understood through the eyes of those who nurtured them and made their work possible. In The Sweetest Fruits, these three women tell the story of their time with Lafcadio Hearn, a globetrotting writer best known for his books about Meiji-era Japan. In their own unorthodox ways, these women are also intrepid travelers and explorers. Their accounts witness Hearn's remarkable life but also seek to witness their own existence and luminous will to live unbounded by gender, race, and the mores of their time. Each is a gifted storyteller with her own precise reason for sharing her story, and together their voices offer a revealing, often contradictory portrait of Hearn. With brilliant sensitivity and an unstinting eye, Truong illuminates the women's tenacity and their struggles in a novel that circumnavigates the globe in the search for love, family, home, and belonging.

Read less

Report incorrect product information.

Print length

304 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Viking

Publication date

September 3, 2019

Dimensions

5.81 x 0.99 x 8.53 inches

Customers who viewed this item also viewedPage 1 of 2Page 1 of 2

The Book Of Salt: A Novel

Monique Truong

4.0 out of 5 stars 198

Paperback

149 offers from AUD 1.84

Bitter in the Mouth: A Novel

Monique Truong

4.1 out of 5 stars 118

Paperback

AUD19.06

AUD 14.54 shipping

Native Speaker

Chang-rae Lee

4.4 out of 5 stars 283

Paperback

209 offers from AUD 1.69

A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel

Ruth Ozeki

4.4 out of 5 stars 2,919

Paperback

135 offers from AUD 1.57

Japanese Ghost Stories

Lafcadio Hearn

4.6 out of 5 stars 276

Paperback

48 offers from AUD 11.78

Breasts and Eggs: A Novel

Mieko Kawakami

4.2 out of 5 stars 1,267

Paperback

65 offers from AUD 12.26

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

The Book Of Salt: A Novel

Monique Truong

4.0 out of 5 stars 198

Paperback

149 offers from AUD 1.84

Bitter in the Mouth: A Novel

Monique Truong

4.1 out of 5 stars 118

Paperback

AUD19.06

AUD 14.54 shipping

from unincorporated territory [saina]

Craig Santos Perez

4.8 out of 5 stars 19

Paperback

9 offers from AUD 15.84

From the Publisher

The Sweetest Fruits

The Sweetest Fruit

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for The Sweetest Fruits:

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

Winner of the Binghamton Center for Writers’ John Gardner Fiction Prize

"A marvelous mixture of fact and imagination . . . Truong’s lush style is on gorgeous display in these pages, her imagery evoking hidden emotional depths . . . While the lives, loves and adventures of Lafcadio Hearn hold center stage in this novel, these are set off by a rich brocade of social critiques — of slavery, colonization and the repression of women. With great generosity and compassion, Truong explores the difference between writing and telling stories, with the question of who gets to speak and who remains silent." —Diana Abu-Jaber, The Washington Post

"A delicate, impressionistic tale . . . Truong is exploring personal memory in all its creative and contradictory subjectivity . . . [The Sweetest Fruits] is propelled not by action but by the retrospective piecing together that happens once a relationship is over. Spurred by nostalgia, regret, longing and anger, each woman examines her memories . . . As Setsu observes, 'to tell another’s story is to bring him to life,' but here it’s the women who achieve that feat rather than the man who connected them." —Priya Parmar, The New York Times Book Review

"I've been addicted to Truong's writing ever since her debut, The Book of Salt, a work of historical fiction incorporating real people that felt—unlike much of that genre—lush, invigorating, and real. Her third novel fictionalizes Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn but through the eyes of only his mother and his two wives—one a freed American slave, the other his Japanese translator." —Boris Kachka, New York Magazine

"Monique Truong’s nomadic tale is a look at the storied life of 19th century writer and expeditionist Lafcadio Hearn through the eyes of the women who knew him best. Sweeping in scope and written in tight, precise language, it’s a read-into-the-night pick." —Marie Claire

"Truong transforms author Lafcadio Hearn’s biography into a revelatory mystery by giving voice to three women who shaped him." —Jane Ciabattari, BBC

"Mesmerizing . . . Truong focuses on the mostly neglected women in Hearn’s life, imagining the struggles and sorrows of his mother, and, looking at him through the eyes of his two wives, imparts searing counterpoints to the iconic Hearn . . . In going beyond the knowable and guiding us through the imaginable, Truong takes the measure of the man through his women in coruscating prose." —Jeff Kingston, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Monique Truong brings to life brave, spirited women left out of a history that privileges what Toni Morrison called 'the master narrative.' In doing so, she humanizes rather than diminishes Hearn. Through disparate, often contradictory narratives, she invites further investigation: keep telling it slant, whatever it takes, to reveal, as Dickinson writes, 'truth’s superb surprise'—that sweetest of all fruits. A worthy endeavor at any time, it’s an especially urgent one today." —World Literature Today

“A captivating work of historical fiction that flung me into three very different places in time around the world . . . [I was] so impressed with Truong’s ability to write in such disparate voices and bring together a really original novel.” —Cathy Erway, HuffPost

"An absolutely brilliant intersection of fiction and history, politics and culture, love and loss." —Hyphen Magazine

"Truong’s innovative narration gives us the stories of three incredible women right at the moments those stories are being repurposed or lost. Even more importantly, it shows us those erasures in process. . . . Truong’s genius for finding joy and life amidst trauma and dislocation ensures that the novel she germinated from the traces left by Patrick Lafcadio Hearn is filled with plenty and sweetness, too. In The Sweetest Fruits, even fragmented and forgotten stories offer sustenance. And in nourishing them it nourishes us." —Believer

"Truong is among the most talented literary fiction writers working in the United States . . . [The Sweetest Fruits is] an exciting new development in her writing career . . . For anyone whose life feels overshadowed by a more powerful figure, or even just not centered at any point in life for reasons beyond one’s control, reading [this] novel can be a vindicating experience." —Rei Magosaki, Los Angeles Review of Books

"An absorbing dive into disparate places and societies, [The Sweetest Fruits] illustrates the critical roles women have played in the accomplishments of men. It also offers an intimate portrait of each region’s food culture, told through its characters." —Food & Wine

“An inspired look at one of the most original characters of the 19th century.” —Mental Floss

“Truong deserves considerable praise for [this] beautiful, complex story . . . As a moving, poignant novel, [The Sweetest Fruits] is magnificent; as a recontextualization of malestream history, it is long overdue.” —PopMatters

"The globetrotting 19th-century writer Lafcadio Hearn may be at the heart of Truong’s entrancing novel, but it derives its power from the sequence of three women who loved him . . . Truong’s smart novel, told in evocative, lush language, raises important questions." —The National Book Review

"A glorious imaginative reclamation of the stories of those who loved and nurtured [Lafcadio] Hearn and his storytelling." —Electric Literature

"In The Sweetest Fruits, Monique Truong does what she does best, painting a vivid portrait of privilege, restlessness, and tenacity through the conflicting experiences of characters grappling with their senses of love, family, and home." —Kevin Chau, Lit Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2019"

"In this globetrotting, luminous novel, the three narrators offer an honest, contradictory portrait of the man they knew that highlights the social expectations of their gender, race, and class for their time. Like [Truong's] first novel, The Book of Salt, The Sweetest Fruits leads readers [into] a sweeping narrative that poses questions about belonging, existence, and storytelling." —Kate Gavino, The Millions, "Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview"

"[A] sparkling, imaginative historical novel." —Philadelphia Inquirer

"Without ever giving him a voice, this thoughtfully crafted, brilliantly researched novel is an intimate look into [Hearn’s] strange, storied life." —Columbia Magazine

"[Truong's] sweeping prose lifts up the unsung women behind Hearn, a man larger than life in part thanks to those whom history has failed to note." —Observer, "The Must-Read New Books of Fall 2019"

"[A] remarkable novel about love, the power of memory, and betrayal . . . Truong is dazzling on the sentence level, and she inhabits each of these three women brilliantly. Truong’s command of voice and historical knowledge brings the stories of these remarkable women to life." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Extraordinary . . . by reclaiming these exemplary women’s voices, Truong enhances history with illuminating herstory too long overlooked." —Terry Hong, Booklist (starred review)

"It isn't only the fantastic Lafcadio Hearn who springs to new life in these pages. The women around him do as well, even as they mix the extraordinary and the ordinary in an exhilarating new way. The Sweetest Fruits is brilliant and heartbreaking--I was transfixed." —Gish Jen, author of Typical American

"Monique Truong has composed a sublime, many-voiced novel of voyage and reinvention. It will cross horizons, yet remain burrowed in your heart." —Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

"Intimate and sensuous yet majestic in scope, The Sweetest Fruits is a rapturous, glorious novel, extraordinarily alive to the world." —Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew

"Presented in four courses from the perspective of the women closest to him, The Sweetest Fruits is a feast you’ll want to devour for its arresting metaphors and its beautiful prose." —Anita Lo, author of Solo: A Modern Cookbook for One

"[Truong] imagines the extraordinary lives of three women who loved an extraordinary man [and] creates distinct, engaging voices for these women . . . Bold [and] original.” —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Monique Truong:

"Impressive and ambitious . . . An irresistible, scrupulously engineered confection that weaves together history, art, and human nature . . . Displays the author's supple imagination on every page." —The Los Angeles Times on The Book of Salt

"A debut novel of pungent sensuousness and intricate, inspired imagination . . . A marvelous tale." —Elle on The Book of Salt

"A deeply compassionate and artfully crafted novel about being foreign and family at the same time by the writer whose debut, The Book of Salt, swept us away." —O: The Oprah Magazine on Bitter in the Mouth

About the Author

Monique Truong is the author of two novels, The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth, and her work has been published in fifteen countries. Her awards and honors include the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award.

Patricio Lafcadio Hearn was born hungry. I could tell by the way that he suckled. From the first time that his mouth found the nipple, he was not wont to let it go, his eyes opened and unblinking, watching and daring me to tug myself from him.

All babies were born with an empty stomach, but not all of them were born with such need in their eyes.

His elder brother, Giorgio, my first blessed one, had to be coaxed and tricked. The tip of my little finger dipped in honey was what he took first into his rosebud mouth. Then, patiently, I would guide him to my breast, where honey and milk would mix. This soothed him, but it was not enough to keep him. Giorgio shared my milk with Patricio for less than two months.

I beg of you do not call them "George" and "Patrick." It is not their names. Their father's language is not mine.

Even before I was certain that there would be a blessed second, I suffered his appetite, which was growing in me swift and strong. Patricio demanded of me the small things from the sea. Whelks, which no one sold because the people on Santa Maura, same as on Cerigo, the island where I was born, would not buy something that they could gather like pebbles at the shore. In the mornings, I would leave my first with Old Iota, the only woman on our lane with no children of her own, in order to bend over the wet sand until I felt light-headed or until my basket was full. Patricio wanted the whelks boiled, their spiral of flesh removed one by one. He allowed me olive oil and lemon juice with them but never vinegar.

When there was no longer a doubt and whelks became too difficult for me to collect, Patricio insisted on cockles, of which there were sellers because cockles were found on the sandbars far from shore, where the tide came in like the hand of God.

To lose your life for mere cockles is a curse as old as the sea, and may you never hear it spoken.

Like his father, Patricio disliked garlic. He purged me of all foods, even the favored cockles, if they took on its flavor. I would whisper to him that these cloves were the pearls of the land, holding them close to my swollen belly so that he could become accustomed to their scent, but he was not to be convinced. He emptied and emptied me again until I was starving. I soon gave up on the hope of garlic and steamed the cockles open with a sliver of shallot instead. Patricio could not get enough of those briny creatures. It took buckets of them to fill us.

During the last months when we were one, Patricio confined us to sea urchins, their egg-yolk bodies scooped onto chunks of bread. Every day, to make sure that we had enough, Old Iota paid four boys to wade into the shallows at low tides, where these spiny orbs darkened the water like the shadows of gulls flying overhead. Fattened on this fare, day in and day out, I took on such weight that I could take only a few steps around the bed, an animal tied to a stake.

By then Charles-the father of Giorgio, Patricio, and soon, God willing, my blessed third-was already on another island, in waters so far away that I could not understand the distance between us. Before his ship set sail, Charles had told me the exact nautical miles between the islands of Santa Maura and Dominica, but a long string of numbers was as useless to me as the letters of an alphabet.

When I open my mouth, I can choose between two languages, Venetian and Romaic, but on paper I cannot decipher either one. When I was young, I had begged to join my elder brothers in their daily lessons, but my father refused. He said that if I ever left his house, I would enter into the House of God or the house of my husband. In either structure, there would be a man present to tell me what was written and what was important to know.

My father was not thinking about a man named Charles Bush Hearn from the island of Ireland when he told me my fate. My father was not a man of original thoughts. He repeated what came out of the mouths of other men, primarily those of nobility, minor like himself. He taught my two brothers to do the same. They all believed that this echoing made them wise and far wiser than me.

To be a daughter is another curse as old as the sea, and I was born hearing it.

Giorgio was six months in this world, and Patricio was five months in me, when Charles left us in Lefkada town, on Santa Maura Island, in the care of Old Iota. When I first met her, I could see that she was not really old. I recognized her as the woman who lived a few doorways down from mine. She and I had never traded words. If I were to be honest with God, I never traded words with any woman on that lane until my firstborn, Giorgio, had left it shrouded in myrtle leaves. After my saint of a boy, my shadow of a child departed before a full year of life, I wanted to blame God, to curse Him with all the profane words that I had heard my brothers use against Charles and me, but I did not. I needed Him to be there for Patricio.

Giorgio had been denied the Sacrament of Holy Baptism because of my sins. The Orthodox Church did not want his soul when he was born to me, and the Orthodox Church did not want his soul upon his leaving me. There could be no funeral service for Giorgio among the Icons, the censers, and the beeswax candles. No "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" intoned three times. No "Blessed are those whose way is blameless," which so rightly described my blessed first. No "With the Saints give rest, O Christ, the soul of your servant where there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor suffering, but life everlasting."

The full weight of what I had done broke me on that morning of sunlight and rain when I could not wake Giorgio from his sleep. I wanted to throw my worthless shards onto the cobblestones and let passersby grind them into dust with the heels of their shoes, but I had to gather them up for Patricio. I could not fail two sons. I did not know then that there would be a blessed third who, God willing, will be another son.

At the graveside, I held on to Patricio's sleeping body so tightly that Old Iota had to pull my arms apart so that he could breathe. There were three of us that afternoon, taking in air. The farmer, who had dug the small basin of dirt among his quince trees for an indecent price because he knew that it was there or the sea, refused to be present, as if hiding in his house meant that God would not see his greed. As sunlight poured down upon us, I knew in my heart that it was not God who had rejected my son. It was men who had rejected him. Perhaps that thought was another of my sins. Perhaps I added to my tally by intoning three times "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us."

Old Iota sucked in her breath when she heard those words coming from my mouth. We both knew that at the graveside they belonged in the mouth of a priest. But what was I to do in the face of absence and silence? Giorgio was my child and a child of God. I knew both to be true. I listened to my heart that day, and it was a fist pounding with anger. My heart opened my mouth. My mouth pleaded, even if to no avail, for my blessed Giorgio.

Cradled in my arms, Patricio slept. He must have felt my body trembling when the farmer emerged at last from his house to shovel dirt, cleaner than himself, onto my blessed one. Patricio must have heard the summer soil crumbling as it hit the myrtle leaves and then the small wooden box beneath. It was the sound of a sudden downpour, and it made me look up at the sky. The date of Giorgio's passing, August 17, 1850, I have committed to memory, but it was this rain of dirt that marked when my blessed one was taken from me, when the distance separating his body from mine became eternal. Words and numbers could never do the same.

On our lane, the mothers-previously so close-lipped, their eyes hooded in judgment-felt pity toward me. They came to my front door, in twos and threes, with whole walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds. In Lefkada town, these were offered for the remission of the sins of the recently departed. The custom was familiar to me, but their choice of offerings was not. Every night, I threw the walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds away with the vegetable scraps. Every morning, Old Iota picked them out, wiped clean their hard shells, and stored them in a clean cloth sack. By the end of the first week, she had enough for months' worth of baking. She was practical in ways that I had yet to learn.

I asked Old Iota if she knew what these mothers-I did not say "mothers," I said "hags"-had said about her when she was not in the room.

Without looking up from the eggplant peelings and the tomato seeds that her hands were searching through, Old Iota asked whether I knew that the walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds were not for Giorgio's sins but for mine. "On Santa Maura Island," she said, "the hags bring sugared almonds when a baby passes."

The women had whispered to me-as if Old Iota did not know the details of her own life and might overhear them and learn something new-a story that began with a sixteen-year-old Iona, as she was called then, the only daughter of a widower who married her off to the eldest son of a farming family, a day's mule ride from Lefkada town.

Iona did not meet her husband until the day that they received the Sacrament of Marriage. In a house in the middle of a sea of olive trees, Iona then gave birth to five boys in six years, but none of them had a heart that would beat for more than a month, the last one not even a day.

How many dishes of sugared almonds did Iona discard before she understood that there would be another? The mothers on the nearby farms would continue to offer them, a custom of the Orthodox Church but with roots that were deeper, older, and more practical. These mothers with their work-worn hands were guiding Iona onto her back again, so that she could be one of them again. They told Iona to eat half of the sugared almonds, to let their sweetness spread over her tongue, and then feed the rest to her husband with her fingers. This made Iona blush. "Another baby will soon grace you," said these mothers. They said "grace" to cover up the animal acts that they wanted for her, and Iona did as she was told.

Iona's last born died within moments of opening his eyes and was not baptized before he took his last breath. Iona's husband left her and the body of this baby, who would always be lonely in Purgatory while his four elder brothers had one another's company in the Kingdom of Heaven, at the front door of her father's house. That was when Iona first met the quince farmer with the small graves hidden among his trees.

At the age of twenty-two, Iona had nothing. Upon her return to Lefkada town, her neighbors gave her a new name and a new age. Her cheeks caved. Her breasts sagged. Her hair streaked with white. The black dresses of widows became her habit, and Old Iota became her name.

When Charles hired Old Iota, she was twenty-eight, and I was twenty-six.

It was the sixteen-year-old Iona whom I thought of whenever I found myself staring at her. I searched her forehead, creased like a slept-in bedsheet, her hands knobbed and full of bones, and I wondered if she ever felt graced by her husband, whether sweetness ever spread from Iona's tongue down to the rest of her as well. Whenever I thought about the animal that she once was, I knew that I was missing Charles, not with my heart.

I could not write to my husband of my thoughts for him, so I saved them for Holy Confession at the Church of Santa Paraskevi, where the Reverend Father would listen to my words until he stifled a moan.

Elesa, you hesitated at "moan." Did your mother-may she rest in peace-never teach you this word in Venetian? You can write it down in English, if you need. Patricio will know what it means one day.

Afterward, I intoned the Prayer of Repentance. Its last line, "Teach me both to desire and to do only what pleases You," was an honest plea. Then I closed my eyes and waited. In the darkness, the body I saw was not Charles's and certainly not the Reverend Father's, whose long beard was a bib for rusk crumbs and droplets of red wine. I saw the Son of God, His limbs gilded, His hair long and woman-like, His wounds displayed and unashamed. I had worshipped at His nailed feet since I was a young girl, and it was His body that I saw first among men. Without the image of the Crucifixion, how would I have known of a man's muscled thighs, his taut abdomen, and the mystery behind the cloth?

Of course you must write that down, Elesa. Patricio will read it and not blush. Nor will God. Do you think that He will deny me the Kingdom of Heaven? You have heard only the beginning of my story. God has other reasons to deny me, my dear.

Pick up the pen, Elesa. Did you make certain to bring enough nibs and bottles of ink, as I had asked? May I remind you that an arrangement is an arrangement. We are too far on the Irish Sea for you to change your mind now.

I will speak slower. You look out of breath already. It is important that you write down every word. Patricio, I know, will want to find me one day, and I want him to know where to begin.

Read less

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; 1st Edition (September 3, 2019)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735221014

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735221017

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.95 pounds

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 0.99 x 8.53 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#4,199 in Biographical Historical Fiction

#4,619 in Biographical Fiction (Books)

#63,997 in Women's Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews: 4.3 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Monique Truong

Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, Monique Truong came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975. She is a writer based now in Brooklyn. Her novels are The Sweetest Fruits (Viking Books, 2019), Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), and The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). She is also an essayist and librettist, working in collaboration with the composer Joan La Barbara.

A Guggenheim Fellow, U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow in Tokyo, Visiting Writer at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and Princeton University’s Hodder Fellow, she was most recently the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College in New York City. Truong received her BA in Literature from Yale University and her JD from Columbia Law School. Visit her at www.monique-truong.com

Read less

How would you rate your experience shopping for books on Amazon today?

Very poor Neutral Great

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars

4.3 out of 5

37 global ratings

5 star

68%

4 star

3 star

15%

2 star 0% (0%)

1 star

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Popular Answered Questions

Are the excerpts from Elizabeth Bisland’s biography of Lafcadio Hearn as they can be read in Monique Truong’s The Sweetest Fruits real or imaginary?

Like One Year Ago Add Your Answer

Nguyen Xuan Imaginary.

After all, The Sweetest Fruits is a novel and Elizabeth Bisland only one among its characters. Monique Truong said so in so many words when …more

flag

See 1 question about The Sweetest Fruits…

LISTS WITH THIS BOOK

The Nickel Boys by Colson WhiteheadThe Testaments by Margaret AtwoodRed at the Bone by Jacqueline WoodsonThe Dutch House by Ann PatchettThe Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview (July - September)

82 books — 43 voters

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha PowerCatch and Kill by Ronan FarrowThe Dutch House by Ann PatchettRed at the Bone by Jacqueline WoodsonThe Topeka School by Ben Lerner

NYT Editors’ Choice 201910

51 books — 21 voters

More lists with this book...

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Showing 1-30

Average rating3.24 · Rating details · 374 ratings · 72 reviews

Search review text

English ‎(67)

More filters | Sort order

Sejin,

Sejin, start your review of The Sweetest Fruits

Write a review

Stacia

Jan 05, 2020Stacia marked it as abandoned

I should have liked it. I did like it. But I got halfway through & never really felt the urge to pick it up again. Shrug.

flag12 likes · Like · comment · see review

Annie

Aug 11, 2019Annie rated it it was amazing

At one point in Monique Truong’s novel, The Sweetest Fruits, one of the narrators tells her interviewer that it’s not enough to just get the story of one person: you have to also get the stories of the people around them. And that’s exactly what we get in this novel based on the life of author Lafcadio Hearn and three of the women in his life. (Technically four, if you count the excerpts from Elizabeth Bisland‘s biography of her friend.) While we learn a lot about Hearn, I was more fascinated by the lives of the women who loved him than I was about a man who often struck me as selfish and fussy. The women tell us about love, sacrifice, abandonment, difficult choices, compatibility, and so much more. This book is an amazing piece of writing that, while it hews very close to actual history, amplifies it in ways that only faction can do...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. (less)

flag6 likes · Like · comment · see review

Oceantide74

Jan 11, 2020Oceantide74 rated it did not like it

1.5 stars. I admit I was ignorant about Hearn. I liked the beginning chapters about his mother (what a sad and lonely childhood Lafcadio had) and then it went downhill from there. The sections of the book were not seamless and I was confused by who was who with all the different Japanese names. I especially did not like the biographical parts of Elizabeth. I found myself skimming towards the end and wanting to just finish it.

flag5 likes · Like · comment · see review

Cat

Sep 14, 2019Cat rated it really liked it

I think Truong is a stunningly brilliant writer. Her Bitter in the Mouth is one of my favorite books, and I teach the luminous and melancholy The Book of Salt. Her gift with understated yet indelible narrative voices is displayed to full effect in The Sweetest Fruits, the story of Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, whom I did not know at all, told by three women who loved him. That synopsis is accurate and yet utterly misleading; that summary sounds like an exhausting "Great Man" history, and indeed, the New Yorker, mentioning Truong's new book in a recent article, takes up that invitation and starts trying to define what it is that made Lafcadio's voice so memorable, his achievement great. But for me, this book was more about what Virginia Woolf famously called the tale of Judith Shakespeare, the women's stories that fall by the wayside in the construction of the Great Man narrative, and particularly the women of color. Truong does not villainize Hearn, and indeed, she implies that his disability (a childhood eye injury leading to partial blindness) and his dark skin gave him the negative capability to relate to marginalized peoples. He drinks and carouses in black neighborhoods in the US; he takes on a Japanese name and citizenship when he moves to Japan; he cherishes the Caribbean islands and mourns the hurricanes they face.

In spite of this receptivity and charm in Hearn, Truong also charts the sinister power of white masculinity. In the first section, narrated by Hearn's mother, the gradual dismissal of her by her Irish lover and his aunt's bribe to be rid of this inconvenient mother and gifted her boy child who could be the family heir are deeply disturbing. At first, she lives in veritable confinement as a young girl, and then when she seeks companionship and intimacy, her pregnancy launches her into a life of estrangement and isolation with little consolation from the Irish man who loved sleeping with a passionate young virgin in a barn but cherished far less the prospect of a dark-skinned, non-English speaking wife back home. You see the immediate physical and social costs of being a woman in this patriarchal, Anglophilic society, no matter the sympathies the Irishman initially has with languages and identities repressed by colonial powers.

In the second section, it is not Hearn's father who is the embodiment of white masculinity's privilege and cruelty, but rather Hearn himself. An African-American book named Althea describes her courtship by this unusual young man, the drawings he would make for her, casting himself as a crow alighting on her branch. Hearn devotes himself to Alethea and to her foster child, but after marrying her, resents the limits that her color places on his career and status. He internalizes the shame of a white supremacist society, and he ultimately abandons her. But Truong makes it clear that Hearn is not merely responding to external pressures; he imagines himself her author and instructor: he renames her, never calling her Alethea; he rejects her Southern cooking and insists that she prepare European fare (and then denigrates what she comes up with). The sweetness of the man who scribbled her drawings and insisted that color was no object to their love gives way to the autocratism of unearned arrogance. She is disillusioned when she realizes the full extent of his alcoholism and philandering. The whole section is also cast as a letter defending her legal rights to claim him as a husband, which underscores how she has been erased from the official narrative. (Truong extensively quotes Hearn's first biographer, which is a beautifully pointed reflection on historiography's power.)

Finally, the last section of the novel is narrated by Setsu, Hearn's Japanese wife. She is the mother of his children and his ambassador to a new world, which he would become famous in the West for documenting and preserving. Setsu's section establishes Hearn's figuratively blindness, which comes from his own sense of himself as a European explorer in a quaint, Oriental, authentic land. He blunders into rural regions and insists on viewing their folk traditions; Setsu lies to him in order to protect him from the villagers' rage and violence. Hearn cannot imagine that any of these religious and ritual observances should not belong to him. He coopts Setsu's personal stories in his literary works, rarely referring to her (as his son resentfully realizes). He also overlooks the blossoming love between his wife and his best friend and translator, who dies young of tuberculosis. Setsu skillfully allows her husband to believe in her unwavering and exclusive devotion, a loyalty that he both counts upon and discounts as he sees her as a tool establishing his own authorship and paternity.

Because I don't know Hearn's work at all, my overwhelming impression from the novel was of his arrogance and unwitting cruelty. I suspect that Truong has more sympathy with Hearn than I ended up feeling. Men get to tell the story and reap the rewards; Hearn writes a Creole cookbook (claiming Alethea's territory) and Japanese ghost stories (claiming Setsu's). Maybe there will be a point in my life where I see more pathos in the condition of the white dude caught between imperialism and alterity, nationalism and expatriatism, privilege and marginalization. But for now, I was much more taken--thanks to Truong's artistry--with these women and their stories of survival and insight. (less)

flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review

Laura

Nov 10, 2019Laura rated it liked it

I loved the first 2/3rds of this book so much! I found the last third, the final narrator, impenetrable. It took me weeks to get through that last section. I can appreciate the monumental task of this book and the first sections were truly great.

flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review

Mrs C

Jun 08, 2019Mrs C rated it it was amazing

This is a reimagined life of Patricio Lafcaido Hearn, a Greek-Irish writer with a storied life as told by three women. The first is his mom, a Greek woman who was later forced to abandon Hearn when he was 2. The second is Hearn’s first wife, a black cook whom he married while he was a young reporter in Cincinatti. The third is his second wife, a high-ranking Samurai’s daughter who was half Hearn’s age whom he married while living as a teacher for boys in Japan. Majestic and lyrical. Great for fans of Ernest Van der Kwast.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy. (less)

flag3 likes · Like · see review

Moumita

Oct 13, 2020Moumita rated it it was amazing

I did not like the man. I liked those around him. You can tell that this story was meticulously researched and I really enjoyed the range of voices.

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

cat

Dec 20, 2019cat rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-in-2019

SO BUMMED! Her novel the Book of Salt was one of my favorite books and I was incredibly excited to read this one. Nope. I can see how others may love it, and she is obviously an incredibly talented writer, but I could barely make myself care enough to finish the book. This is probably the saddest review of the year for me. I had such expectations. Both of her other novels won rave reviews from me and I recommended them to everyone I know, and then this book, which I could not connect with at all ...more

flag2 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review

Ming

Dec 25, 2019Ming rated it really liked it

"Wait, are we talking about the same person?" Ever hear that when two or more people compare notes about a supposed "common" other who is unrecognizable to each.

In three sections, women in different countries and cultures describe Lafcadio at different spans of his life. Each depiction could not be more distinct from the other two. The constants are food and an Elizabeth character. Each section is actually the story about a woman than the man they had in common. He, the professional storyteller, is used as an instrument in the service of the women with the stories.

Truong's writing is beautiful and clever; and her imagined perspectives on Lafcadio sharp and witty. She performs, in writing, a kind of channeling, rich with the flaws of humanity and insights into its irony and contradictions. There's an affectionate acuity in Truong's writing. (And I often think about her book, Bitter in the Mouth, the only book I reread immediately after turning the last page on the first go. And thus, I anticipated this book and will eagerly wait for more from her.)

Several quotes:

...When my father was not an echo, he spoke in circles, a snake swallowing its tail.

At midmorning, the aromas , which hung like damp laundry over the street of villas, were the same as those coming from Kanella's kitchen. Onions and olive oil. The whole island by noon was a pan of sweet onions melting....

I was spare with my words when I was with Charles, as the fewer that I used, the better we understood each other.

....We understood one another. I understood them so well that I soon despised them both....

Believing a man doesn't mean making a fool of yourself. that was Aunt Sweetie talking. Molly taught me my kitchen skills but Aunt Sweetie taught me--or she tried to--what I would need to know in the other rooms of the house. She never married, and she told me that made her wiser than most women.

Religion, Pat had said to me and then I had repeated it to Charlotte, was for people who needed to believe that death was better than life. I was afraid to tell her what else Pat had said, but I did. Heaven is a good story, Mattie, and good stories get retold....

...Pat was a terrible storyteller, and I told him so. Pat looked up, his eye aglow. On the contrary, he said. He was a very good storyteller, as the listener wanted to know more, which was the point of storytelling.

When you've been taught that you are lesser, there was another way to empty yourself of anger, the stubborn kind, the kind closer to shame. It was cheaper than drink, but it cost those around you more. I didn't tell Pat about this other way. he came to it on his own.

...I don't know what Creole cooking is, but if these are colored folks, then I know a thing or two about what's on their tables. What I want to know is whether these were the dishes that they cooked in their own kitchens or whether these were dishes that they cooked in the kitchens of others. The two aren't the same. The first is what they hunger for, and the second is what their hunger make them do.

..."Facts are akin to fish bones," he said. "If what you want is to serve the flesh, then the bones can be discarded," he suggested. (less)

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

Toni

Sep 11, 2020Toni rated it it was ok

Shelves: a-likely-story-book-club-read

Barely 2 stars!

OMG it took reading almost 1/2 of the story before the line of writing became evident and made some sort of sense (that a journalist was taking the story of three women and their life connections to Patrick Hearn). Google Patrick Hearn to learn who he was; that's what I had to do in order to understand this story. I actually got more about the story from the GoodReads synopsis than from the book itself!

Truong has a very unorthodox writing style; I didn't particularly enjoy it. The beginning of the story and the end alike 9the stories of Casi and Setsu - mother and wife 2 ) were very confusing. Plus the interjections of Elizabeth (the journalist) only added to the confusion. It was like putting together a tough jigsaw puzzle.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - I give Althea's story and almost 3 stars and the rest of the book I can only give one star which averages out to barely two stars! I wouldn't consider reading other books by Tuong. (less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

Laurie

Jan 04, 2020Laurie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, adult, historical-fiction, family, strong-female-characters, cultural-conflicts, marriage, americana, relationships

Yes, I was immediately drawn to The Sweetest Fruits because Lafcadio Hearn (what is it that makes him so fascinating?) is the subject....but this is not a book about Lafcadio Hearn, or only tangentially. What the book is really about is the inner life of the women in Hearn's life and through telling their tales of their lives with him, we see their love, loss and pain; and Hearn's as well. Each woman, first his Greek mother, Rosa Antonia Cassimati, then his African-American wife, Alethea Foley and finally his Japanese wife, Koizumi Setsu share their reminiscences of life with Hearn with his first official biographer, Elizabeth Bisland. But that's only the story for the public; what makes this book so good is the second story that each woman relates; the story they've held back to keep just for themselves. Monique Truong brings to her characters an individual voice and pathos which makes each woman equally as fascinating as Lafcadio Hearn. (less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

Aust, US, Canada: migrant & native experiences; Films

Labels

Sunday, March 27, 2022

The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong - Ebook | Scribd

No comments:

Post a Comment