Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
Rating: 4.5
Finally! A book I want to write about!
I've been in a bit of a reading rut lately, but Sweetbitter has helped me kick it. This book was poetic, classy, messy, and absolutely scrumptious. I loved this book from start to finish and when I set it down I couldn't wait to get back to it.
Sweetbitter is about a young woman who moved to New York City to start her life. She gets a job as a back waiter at a prestigious restaurant and starts her journey as a New York City woman. She learns about food, wine, love, and pain, and somewhere along the way she starts to find herself.
The exploration of wine tasting and the savoring descriptions of decadent food made this book an absolute delight to nibble on. The delicacy of language in this book is one I could take the time to appreciate. Look below for some of my favorite passages.
Favorite Quotes:
"Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us, the first narcotic we craved and languished in. We've tamed, refine it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood" (8).
"You see, what those kids over there don't realize is that cool is always past tense. The people who lived it, who set the standards they emulate, there was no cool for them. There was just the present tense: there were bills, friendships, messy fucking, fucking boredom, a million trite decisions on how to pass the time. Self-awarenss destroys it. You call something cool and you bring it. Then- poof- it's gone. It's just nostalgia" (194).
"You can't make a set of aesthetic decisions without making an ethical one. That's what makes them fake people" (194).
"It is ludicrous for anyone to live here and I can never leave" (211).
"The city does sleep, the windows darken and the streets vacate. New York dreams us. Wild, somnambulistic creatures, we move unhurried toward our own disappearance at dawn" (316).
