A review by oddly
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
4.0
Full review and cuddly puppy love here: http://www.shelfstalker.net/blog/sweetbitter-stephanie-danler
Warning: Do not read this book on an empty stomach. Preferably, you’ll have oysters and a great bottle of wine to pair.
I have not worked in a restaurant, but Stephanie Danler’s debut novel Sweetbitter makes it seem unbearable, beautiful, physically painful, delectable, emotionally draining, and worth every minute. The book follows Tess, a newcomer to New York City and the upscale restaurant business, as she navigates her way through this new world, trying to find herself and her place in it.
Both the city and the restaurant have such parallels: they seem shining and bright, beautiful and glamorous to any outsider, but the knowledgeable insider knows better. They see the seedy underbelly, where things are rotten and falling apart, the places where the flies congregate and the inspector hopefully won’t look.
The restaurant is like a microcosm of the city as a whole and Tess’s experience in the restaurant definitely shapes how she sees the city, and more broadly, the world.
The book is interesting as it is a coming-of-age novel about a girl, more of a young woman actually, but that age, 22, is when we are really beginning to make decisions about our lives here in the modern age.
Warning: Do not read this book on an empty stomach. Preferably, you’ll have oysters and a great bottle of wine to pair.
I have not worked in a restaurant, but Stephanie Danler’s debut novel Sweetbitter makes it seem unbearable, beautiful, physically painful, delectable, emotionally draining, and worth every minute. The book follows Tess, a newcomer to New York City and the upscale restaurant business, as she navigates her way through this new world, trying to find herself and her place in it.
Both the city and the restaurant have such parallels: they seem shining and bright, beautiful and glamorous to any outsider, but the knowledgeable insider knows better. They see the seedy underbelly, where things are rotten and falling apart, the places where the flies congregate and the inspector hopefully won’t look.
The restaurant is like a microcosm of the city as a whole and Tess’s experience in the restaurant definitely shapes how she sees the city, and more broadly, the world.
The book is interesting as it is a coming-of-age novel about a girl, more of a young woman actually, but that age, 22, is when we are really beginning to make decisions about our lives here in the modern age.