Reviews

Salt by Catrin Kean

toniclark's review

4.0

Salt is beautifully written, and its engaging characters are easy to care about. The story is based on the lives and love of the author’s great-grandparents — Ellen, a Welsh woman who marries Samuel, a Barbadian sailor (ship’s cook) and travels with him onboard the Mary Alice to San Francisco and later Barbados. With themes of class and race, the story is full of both joy and sadness, hope and despair. In 2021, Salt won the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, the Wales Arts Review People's Choice Award, and the overall prize for Wales Book of the Year. A great read, which I heard about from the delightful Book Cougars podcast!

story_scrapper's review

3.5

Kean makes her characters so sympathetic it hurts, but it hurts just as beautifully as the prose is written.

gilljames's review

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This is based on a  true story. There is a lot of love and laughter but also a good deal of sadness.  Catrin Kean provides us with convincing characters that we come to love. Her story engages throughout.