NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A thrilling novel of the senses and a coming-of-age tale, following a small-town girl into the electrifying world of New York City and the education of a lifetime at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Manhattan. • "Brilliantly written.... Outstanding." —The New York Times Book Review Newly arrived in New York City, twenty-two-year-old Tess lands a job working front of house at a celebrated downtown restaurant. What follows is her education: in champagne and cocaine, love and lust, dive bars and fine dining rooms, as she learns to navigate the chaotic, enchanting, punishing life she has chosen. The story of a young woman’s coming-of-age, set against the glitzy, grimy backdrop of New York’s most elite restaurants, in Sweetbitter Stephanie Danler deftly conjures the nonstop and high-adrenaline world of the food industry and evokes the infinite possibilities, the unbearable beauty, and the fragility and brutality of being young and adrift.

NUBClub's take on this novel was fascinating because everyone read the novel the same way, but reactions to that interpretation ranged from hatred to adoration and everything in between. At its heart, we agreed, Sweetbitter is a novel about shallowness. Danler's deliberately un-profound protagonist Tess epitomizes a kind of young NYC vapidity. Rather than give her an ambition or artistic passion (which Danler gives to secondary characters at the restaurant), Tess is motivated to have a pretty apartment, know about food and wine, and get the hot boy. From that lens, the novel is very true and very compelling. The sense of speed of the novel, the feeling that time is passing in a blur, is very well rendered, and Danler knows the industry NYC that her characters run in thoroughly. There was a long discussion of the old school NYC part of NUBClub about what restaurant Danler was modelling and where the characters went to party. That said, the plot was incredibly self-destructive and it was hard to like anyone. Simone and Jake's relationship never quite makes sense -- their history is a bit too twisted. Everything about Simone is uncomfortable -- while she's a well drawn character with great dialogue, it's kind of hard to accept the book's seeming view of her as washed up. When she sees her rich married friend, the book is clearly implying that Simone is the worst off, but why? Because she didn't bag a rich man before she was ... how old is she? 34? It's a bit ridiculous to see Simone as a bitter failure, but the book clearly wants to paint her that way, and in that sense, the rivalry with Tess over Jake seems a bit silly. All the shallowness was enough to make half of NUBClub despise the novel, but those of us who liked it thought the arc was perfect. Sweetbitter is the story of a shallow, hot woman who makes a go of working in the slick, cooler-than-thou, party hard, backstabbing world of NY restaurant culture before she self-immolates and burns out of the scene altogether. That's a shallow story for sure, but it's one you see in NYC all the time, and damn if Danler didn't vividly paint it in its own colors.