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The Taste of Salt Martha Southgate Books

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The Taste of Salt Martha Southgate Books

Have you ever watched an Eastern movie? Say...Crouching/Hidden or Curse of the Golden Flower? A movie that was delicious and visually stunning, with a compelling story, vivid dialogue and rich, vibrant characters? Did you feel at all a little wth when it abruptly ended? Hmm?

No exposition. No epilogue. NOTHING. The story is in full swing. Then black screen. Credits. Me sitting there, slack jawed and unbelieving.

In the West, we like (or at least, *I* like) stories wrapped up in certainty. ANY certainty will do. Characters overcome. Or die. Or continue being SOB's who got their just desserts. SOMETHING.

With this book I got a bit of Curse of the Golden Flower. Beautifully written. Character depth. Vivid imagery. Stunning water motif. A crescendo moment. Black screen. Credits.

I stared at my Kindle, like...? The percentage thingie says 91%. That means *someone* owns me 9% more.

!!!!!!!

Okay. If I look at it as the story of a girl trying to work out her daddy issues (reconnect/forgive/learn to trust), then I guess I have my *something*.

Or perhaps [and I am reaching here] she's stepping into her femininity (or feminist/womanist identity), owning her sexuality and understanding she doesnt need a man to define her (though, there IS the daddy thing, and her husband, brother and lover each left HER, not the other way around)...and the salt water is a rebirth, or tears, or some other such English teacher-y thing? (English teacher here, btw)

Having said that, I'm not so sure what the heck I just read. It was good (I'm pretty sure) dont get me wrong. Just...unsatisfying? I dont know.

It was different. Refreshing, even. Ms. Southgate has managed to travel where others seldom tread. Josie wasnt the typical AA female protagonist (meaning she wasnt a slave, maid, 1960's-anything, Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire or a Waiting-to-Exhale character ripoff - thank God for small favors), but I feel I didnt really get to KNOW Josie. Maybe she didnt know herself?

I'm still working through it. I'll edit this as I contemplate more.


Tags : Amazon.com: The Taste of Salt (9781565129252): Martha Southgate: Books,Martha Southgate,The Taste of Salt,Algonquin Books,1565129253,Literary,AScientists,African American families,African American families;Fiction.,Cleveland (Ohio),Cleveland (Ohio);Fiction.,Scientists;Fiction.,AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY FICTION,African American - General,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,Cultural Heritage,FICTION African American General,FICTION General,FICTION Literary,Family Life,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction-Coming of Age,Fiction-Literary,FictionCultural Heritage,FictionFamily Life - General,GENERAL,General Adult,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Scientists,United States

The Taste of Salt Martha Southgate Books Reviews

Josie is a marine biologist, one of only a few senior-level black women in her position at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In achieving professional success, she has finally been able to free herself of her childhood in Cleveland, of her alcoholic father and addicted younger brother, and she can spend her time in the ocean, where she loves to be more than anything. But she has never fully disentangled herself from the trauma and disappointments of her childhood, and that has a ripple effect in her personal relationships, including her marriage to Daniel, who is also a marine biologist.

The Taste of Salt is a book about the unending power of addiction and the harm it does not only to the addicts, but to those around them. But more than that, this is a book about relationships, about allowing yourself to feel worthy of love, to express your emotions, and trust those around you. The book is narrated mostly by Josie, with chapters told by each of her parents, her brother, and her husband, and it is tremendously compelling.

Martha Southgate, author of the fantastic The Fall of Rome (which isn't about the ancient Romans), has written another terrific book filled with complex characters and beautiful prose. Like the ocean that Josie loves, where what appears on the surface is only a glimpse at the complexities that lie beneath, Josie's relationships and her way of relating to those in her life are far more complicated than they first appear. While Josie might not appear to be the most sympathetic character at the start of the book, I'd encourage you to keep reading, or you'll miss a well-told story of human emotions and interactions.
I love my family. Like most people I admit family is a very complex system. This truth came home to me once again while reading THE TASTE OF SALT by MARTHA SOUTHGATE. In this novel I met the Henderson family. There is Josie, the daughter. The son is Tick. There is Ray, the father. There is the mother, Sarah. Then, There is Daniel. He is Josie's white husband. Josie is Black. They are a biracial couple. For different reasons Josie's childhood was uniquely painful. Her father was an alcoholic. She would live to see her brother Tick fight the same disease. This is the way Josie describes herself and family.

"I am, in part, the sum of all who came before me, my parents and brother, their parents and siblings, and on and on, back onto the slave ships and then back farther, back to Ghana and the slave castles at Elmina and to wherever my ancestors were before that."

Josie's way of defining family, observing family made me realize that parts of our family, the why of it all, will always leave me with more questions than answers. It also left me thinking about who am I to judge how one person handles his/her pain versus how another person might handle circumstances. The family is like a huge, fun, hair splitting jigsaw puzzle.

I liked the novel because it's reality based. There is possibilities for success in life. There are possibilites for failure. With the best of intentions, some of us aren't going to make it through a complete life. On the other side of the balance sheet are the people like Ray who make it. They have fallen but have gotten up again successfully. For those who make it, what made their success possible? Was it a memory of a child? One time Ray remembered Josie.

"I'm so proud of her. When she was a little girl......I used to watch her out in the backyard....She could turn on the hose and watch that water run out of it for hours on end."

The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate is about addictions. There are all sorts of addictions. A person can become addicted to love. That's complicated too. Martha Southgate writes about Ben and Josie.

"I wanted to feel the way I felt--the way we felt--that first time we made love. That's an addiction, of course. But you can never get back that first high. You just keep looking for it, no matter how much damage you cause."

From Cleveland to Woods Hole, Connecticut Martha Southgate's novel is filled with the mysteries of life, the adventures of life. Life isn't a straight line. It's not a circle. Perhaps, it's an ocean. Like Josie, I might find the answers to life by studying the dolphins and whales.

"I had spent my life studying the life all around us in the water. I had spent my life sifting it through my fingers and considering the light, thin bones. I had spent my life this way, considering how the life all around us passes away. And now I would see it in a face I'd always known."

elmina
Have you ever watched an Eastern movie? Say...Crouching/Hidden or Curse of the Golden Flower? A movie that was delicious and visually stunning, with a compelling story, vivid dialogue and rich, vibrant characters? Did you feel at all a little wth when it abruptly ended? Hmm?

No exposition. No epilogue. NOTHING. The story is in full swing. Then black screen. Credits. Me sitting there, slack jawed and unbelieving.

In the West, we like (or at least, *I* like) stories wrapped up in certainty. ANY certainty will do. Characters overcome. Or die. Or continue being SOB's who got their just desserts. SOMETHING.

With this book I got a bit of Curse of the Golden Flower. Beautifully written. Character depth. Vivid imagery. Stunning water motif. A crescendo moment. Black screen. Credits.

I stared at my , like...? The percentage thingie says 91%. That means *someone* owns me 9% more.

!!!!!!!

Okay. If I look at it as the story of a girl trying to work out her daddy issues (reconnect/forgive/learn to trust), then I guess I have my *something*.

Or perhaps [and I am reaching here] she's stepping into her femininity (or feminist/womanist identity), owning her sexuality and understanding she doesnt need a man to define her (though, there IS the daddy thing, and her husband, brother and lover each left HER, not the other way around)...and the salt water is a rebirth, or tears, or some other such English teacher-y thing? (English teacher here, btw)

Having said that, I'm not so sure what the heck I just read. It was good (I'm pretty sure) dont get me wrong. Just...unsatisfying? I dont know.

It was different. Refreshing, even. Ms. Southgate has managed to travel where others seldom tread. Josie wasnt the typical AA female protagonist (meaning she wasnt a slave, maid, 1960's-anything, Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire or a Waiting-to-Exhale character ripoff - thank God for small favors), but I feel I didnt really get to KNOW Josie. Maybe she didnt know herself?

I'm still working through it. I'll edit this as I contemplate more.