Sweetbitter

Starred review from December 7, 2015
This debut is a quintessential coming-of-age story set in a remorseless, unusual city. Time and place are superbly established: the setting is the behind-the-scenes milieu of a celebrated restaurant in 2006 Manhattan. Propelled by “unbridled, unfocused desire” but still essentially naive, 22-year-old Tess has fled an empty life in the Midwest and landed a coveted job as a server in a restaurant that strongly resembles the famous Union Square Café. At first crushingly lonely and exhausted by the arduous routine, Tess is mentored by longtime senior server Simone. Despite warnings to avoid falling for bartender Jake, and willfully blind to the strange relationship between Jake and Simone, Tess begins a passionate affair with him. Meanwhile, she becomes an accepted member of a select society of overworked, terminally tense and bone-tired wait staff. Danler writes about food with sensory gusto as Tess learns how to distinguish the fine points of every wine, how to identify an heirloom tomato or oyster, how to shave a truffle. Tess also learns how to get seriously drunk and snort lines of coke. Early on, she defines the foods and condiments that are sweet and those that are bitter—and her relationships with Simone and Jake are ultimately just that: a sweet time of consummate happiness followed by bitter betrayal. Throughout, Danler evokes Tess’s voice—intimate, confiding, wonderstruck, depressed—with deft skill. This novel is a treat, sure to find a big following.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
An ingenue from the Midwest learns the ways of the world, and the flesh, during her year as a back waiter at a top Manhattan restaurant. A flurry of publicity surrounded the acquisition of this book, which was pitched by an MFA-grad waitress to an editor dining at one of her tables. Danler's debut novel takes place behind the scenes of a restaurant in Union Square whose rigid hierarchy, arcane codes of behavior, and basis in servitude and manual labor makes it less like a modern workplace than the royal court of 18th-century France--but with tattoos and enough cocaine to rival Jay McInerney. There's even a Dangerous Liaisons-type love triangle with the beautiful, naive young narrator at its apex, batted between the mysterious, brilliant waitress who teaches her about wine and the dissolute, magnetic bartender who teaches her about oysters. The older woman says things like, "I know you. I remember you from my youth. You contain multitudes." The older man "was bisexual, he slept with everyone, he slept with no one. He was an ex-heroin addict, he was sober, he was always a little drunk." What 22-year-old could ever resist them? The writing is mostly incandescent, with visceral and gorgeous descriptions of flavors, pitch-perfect overheard dialogue, deep knowledge of food, wine, and the restaurant business, and only occasional lapses into unintentional pretentiousness. From her very first sentences--"You will develop a palate. A palate is a spot on your tongue where you remember. Where you assign words to the textures of taste. Eating becomes a discipline, language-obsessed. You will never simply eat food again"--Danler aims to mesmerize, to seduce, to fill you with sensual cravings. She also offers the rare impassioned defense of Britney Spears. As they say at the restaurant: pick up!

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May 1, 2016

Tess is a Midwestern 22-year-old who escapes to New York City to discover herself. She lands a job at a Union Square restaurant and begins her search for a place to belong. The "new girl" in every sense, Tess is certain of her immortality; she works, studies to learn about wine, drinks excessively, and counters the alcohol with cocaine--all with the diner staff who become her family. She falls for a 30-year-old bartender and is befriended by a server who runs the restaurant. There is a backstory between these new friends, but Tess doesn't quite understand it. In her naivete, she believes her new love can erase the past, until she discovers otherwise. Danler's debut captures the wild abandon of youth set free in a environment where there are no rules. The characters are well drawn, realistic, and enigmatic. Tess's fresh outlook contrasts with the jaded lives of the other employees. VERDICT This first novel is recommended for general fiction readers, especially those with an interest in food and wine. Public and academic libraries will want to purchase. [See Prepub Alert, 11/23/15.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2016
Twenty-one-year-old Tess arrives in New York, chasing a ravenous desire to experience the world. Planning to take the first job she finds, she somehow lands a position at a prestigious Union Square restaurant. The staff, a colorful cast of characters who show her varying degrees of support and impatience, becomes her family. Especially the older Simone, who offers Tess her tutelage while harboring a mysterious past with Jake, the bartender who captures Tess' heart. They teach Tess about enticing foods and amazing wines; then, in the after hours, they provide an education in edgier indulgences: heavy drinking, drugs, and dysfunction. Caught in a dangerous cycle of self-abuse, Tess will have harder lessons to learn than how to run the floor during the dinner rush if she is to have the sort of success she's planned on. As Tess navigates the perils of her new life, she learns enough about herself for the novel to conclude with an encouraging note. Danler was working as a waitress at a tony New York restaurant when she wrote her debut, which offers deliciously vivid descriptions as well as dark, churning moments. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Newsworthy acquisition fever over Danler's first novel and a sizable advance ensure a generous print run (100,000) and an extensive promotional campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

July 25, 2016
With her breathless, raspy voice, reader McKenna embodies the sheer physical sensuality of Danler’s foodie novel; with her youthful sound and tendency to inflect the ends of sentences as though they were questions, she catches the generational zeitgeist of the novel’s protagonist, Tess, who’s fresh out of college and trying to make it as a server in one of New York’s trendiest restaurants. McKenna’s performance ably captures the chaos of the kitchen, ruled by a terrifying chef who bellows “Pick up!” and proclaims the church-like sanctity of his domain. McKenna succeeds at breathing life into book’s main character, who captivates with humor and sensitivity. It all falls flat, however, in her voicing of the other characters, who sound mostly the same except for those who McKenna voices with poorly executed foreign or regional accents, such as the on-again, off-again Slavic cadence of Sasha, a Russian employee of the restaurant. These missteps make the listening experience uneven enough to be distracting. A Knopf hardcover.