Reviewed
by Jennifer Dupree, Circulations Supervisor at Windham Public Library
In
Stephanie Danler’s debut novel, “Sweetbitter”, Tess arrives in New York City
from some unnamed town in rural America. She almost immediately finds a job as
a glorified busboy at an upscale restaurant. She’s smart and tenacious and has a
desire for more life along with a questionable sense of judgement. Tess does
everything too much: work, drink, drugs, sex, love. She finds friends who
become her family, but even there she makes mistakes. She’s so human it hurts.
Through
Tess, the reader gets to peer into the front of house restaurant world. And if
you, like me, are obsessed with all things culinary, you will love watching Tess
eat her way through oysters and anchovies and even through the more pedestrian,
but so intimate, family meal. She learns, with the help of her mentor Simone, a
beguiling older woman, about wine, and I wanted to go out and try everything
she tries (wine-wise). The restaurant scenes are incredibly vivid. From handing
a stack of napkins to a customer with an eating disorder, to adding a splash of
sherry to an old woman’s soup, these moments feel real and tender. When the
health department shows up and all hell breaks loose, I couldn’t stop reading.
Tess
falls instantly and madly in love with bad-boy bartender Jake, even when she’s
repeatedly warned away from him. Jake and Simone have a long and complicated
history that is never entirely clear but is definitely unhealthy. Even though
we know it probably won’t end well, we hope Tess and Jake will find their way
to happily ever after.
This
is Tess’s coming-of-age. When she arrives in New York, she has little to no
sense of herself in the world. She wonders how she can live in such a place,
but then she does. She learns to keep her purse close, her eyes averted, her
focus straight ahead. Along the way, she makes some really bad decisions, and
she suffers the consequences. Her fallibility made me root harder for her.
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