Stephanie Danler is a writer whose work often explores themes of coming-of-age and the restaurant industry. She is the author of the novel Sweetbitter, a story set in the world of fine dining in New York City.
Sweetbitter
Sweetbitter
Synopsis
At twenty-two, Tess leaves a flat, forgettable life behind and arrives in New York City with almost nothing planned except the leaving itself. She talks her way into a job at a celebrated Manhattan restaurant, and the back-of-house world swallows her whole: the punishing rhythm of service, the coded language of wine and food, the after-hours drinking, and the intense, unspoken hierarchies among the people who work there.
Two of them come to define her education. Simone, an older, magnetic senior server, becomes a mentor Tess longs to impress and to become. Jake, beautiful and withholding, becomes an obsession. Between them, Tess learns to taste — and to want — with a new and dangerous intensity.
Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter is a sensuous, finely observed coming-of-age novel about appetite in every sense: for food, for the city, for belonging, and for people who may not be good for you. It captures a particular year of early adulthood, when everything is vivid, precarious, and impossible to hold on to.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
TessProtagonist
A twenty-two-year-old newcomer to New York who takes a job as a backwaiter and is transformed by a year inside a high-end restaurant.
SimoneSupporting
A glamorous, worldly senior server who becomes Tess's mentor, training her palate and her sense of the world.
JakeSupporting
A beautiful, remote bartender who becomes the object of Tess's obsession.
Dr. HowardSupporting
The restaurant's exacting general manager, presiding over the world Tess enters.
Subjects
Places
Edition
SweetbitterHardcover, 2016
356 pages
Alfred A. KnopfLanguage: EnglishISBN: 9781101875940First Edition2 editions available
