As they say at the restaurant: pick up!
An ingénue 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, naïve 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!Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87594-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Thalia, Texas is the sort of God foresaken small town where, "...you can't sneeze without somebody offerin' you a handkerchief." As one of the inhabitants remarks, "Kids nowadays fornicate like frogs," and in patches the reading becomes that slippery. The kids are Sonny and his sidekick, Duane, and they have their senior year in high school to get through. It's made uneasy for them by Jacy, Duane's girl and the image for Sonny's masturbation. She specializes in paroxysmal public kisses with Duane and all her sexual efforts, from a dull nude swimming orgy in Witchita to her eventual elopement with Sonny, are made with audience satisfaction in mind. Their marriage was annulled, but Sonny slept with her mother that night. (He wasn't quite up to Mother's expertise although he'd put in daily practice with the coach's wife.) Sonny is the sympathetic character shown on the verge of manhood, or humanity, depending on your point of view. Hear him thinking after bowing out of the gang rape of a blind heifer: "Before, it had always seemed like fun, whether it was getting drunk or screwing heifers..." Sex is the groin level blind eye that directs all the characters and the basis for any philosophic comment and the end result, normal or subhuman, of all their encounters. It's a commercial book guaranteed to the talented author's audience won with Horsemen Pass By (filmed as Hud) but chockablock with all the devices for teaching fictional heroes the facts of life one meets in print, with monotonous regularity.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1966
ISBN: 0684853868
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1966
IN THE NEWS
An absorbing tale imparted with tenderness and compassion.
Devoted brothers, living a world apart, are enmeshed in a mystery.
Making a poised, graceful literary debut, Fitzpatrick follows the aspirations and anguish of Ilya, a 15-year-old Russian exchange student who arrives in the U.S. burdened by worry about his older brother. After confessing to the murders of three young women, Vladimir is in prison, awaiting a harsh sentence; but Ilya is certain of his innocence, and although he is thousands of miles away, he sets out to prove it. Moving between the small town of Leffie, Louisiana, where Ilya is housed with the Masons, a pious, middle-class host family, and Berlozhniki, a former mining town where he shared a tiny apartment with his mother, grandmother, and brother, Fitzpatrick underscores the contrast between Western excess and Russian impoverishment. On the road to Leffie, Ilya whizzes past grocery stores—“the shelves were completely full,” he notices with amazement—video stores, pizza places, gas stations, and a huge building shaped like a pyramid with two glass walls: the evangelical Star Pilgrim Church, where the Masons worship every Sunday. Their house is sprawling, with foyers, a den, multiple bathrooms and bedrooms, and a heated outdoor pool that, Ilya is shocked to see, can be illuminated for night swimming. Of the Masons’ three daughters, only the sardonic Sadie, the eldest, seems to understand Ilya; as he soon discovers, she, like him, harbors secrets. He should not have been surprised, he reflects, “but his own secrets had made him myopic, made him forget that the world, even America, was a tangle of lives, all twisted and bent.” Ilya confides in Sadie, sharing his worries: Vladimir’s life, he reveals, is inexorably tangled. Unlike Ilya, who excelled academically, Vladimir struggled; he became a petty thief and drug addict, never keeping his promises that he would turn himself around. Beset with guilt, hoping desperately to save Vladimir, Ilya searches the internet for clues to the murders, and, with Sadie’s help, he discovers the corruption and betrayal that landed Vladimir in prison.
An absorbing tale imparted with tenderness and compassion.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55873-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
