Sweetbitter

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.

"This dynamite book is filled with the heart-wrenching indignities of self-discovery, and gives a gritty, inside look to the fast-paced, drug-filled, whirlwind scene of restaurant life." Bon Appétit

"A heady mix of youth, love, gastronomic delights and determined self-invention.... [Danler] is a writer of prodigious talent." San Francisco Chronicle

"Smart, delicious.... A sexy, sweaty book of sensory overload." The Washington Post

Stephanie Danler is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School.

I read a lot that year because I was on the J train for the first time in my New York existence and it felt rough. Not just rougher than the L train, rough for any train. It was blessed with an exceedingly high percentage of junkies, meth heads, women that slapped their kids in front of me, men who sprayed saliva when they screamed at me...

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