Sweetbitter (Danler) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Ms. Danler is a sensitive observer of the almost wartime camaraderie among workers at a restaurant that's humming at full capacity, of the exhaustion, of the postshift drinking in dive bars until dawn, of the sex and other stimulants—the biggest one simply being young and alive and open to the animal and intellectual possibilities that New York offers…. Ms. Danler is a gifted commenter…on many things, class especially…. Sweetbitter grows darker than you might expect, in terms of where Tess's desires lead her. It's a book about hunger of every variety, even the sort that can disturb you and make you sometimes ask yourself, as does Tess, "Was I a monster or was this what it felt like to be a person?"
New York Times - Dwight Garner


[O]utstanding…. Stephanie Danler's first novel, Sweetbitter, is the Kitchen Confidential of our time, written from the cleaner and infinitely more civilized front-of-the-house perspective…It would be a tired story if it weren't so, well, for one thing true and for another so brilliantly written. A coked-out girl who sees the sun come up as many times as Tess does might cause her writer to run out of metaphors for unwelcome daybreak…but Danler never does, and her description of the panic of the unannounced health department inspection was so engrossing to read, I missed a flight even though I had already checked in and was waiting at the gate…. Tess is a character you root for and collude with. Danler has a deeply endearing habit of inviting you, the reader, to participate in Tess's own becoming.
New York Times Book Review - Gabrielle Hamilton


Danler's novel paints a visceral, evocative portrait of what it's like to move to New York in your early twenties. Her spot-on descriptions of New York 10 years ago and Tess's evolution from naif to world-weary server, all in just one year, elevate Sweetbitter—the opposite of "Bittersweet"—above its chic-lit trappings into an irresistible coming-of-age tale that can truly be savored.
Mae Anderson - Associated Press


Sweetbitter...dresses the bones of a classic coming-of-age story with the lusty flesh and blood of a bawdy early twenty-first-century picaresque.... Danler...quickly draws you into the sparkling surfaces and the shadowy underbelly of the city... [Tess's] insatiable hunger for tactile, sensual satisfaction dares you to tag along. The journey is high-minded and dirty, beastly and bountiful.
Elle
 

Danler’s ravishing debut is like inhabiting the heady after-midnight hours of a city drunk on its own charms… [Her] descriptions of food and drink go beyond mouth-watering, verging on orgasmic…a first novel [that] tantalizes, seduces, satisfies.
Leigh Haber - O Magazine


Sweetbitter is the rare novel that transcends its hype.... Come for the Meyer-lemon-tart narrator, Tess; stay for author Danler’s lush and precise writing about food, drugs, and dives.
New York


Danler can be a brilliant observer of the city; she can make dialogue snap; she is unafraid to give us a protagonist whose drive can be monstrous.
Newsday


Tess’s sensual awakening to food: creamy, ash-dusted cheeses; anchovies drenched in olive oil; dense, fleshy figs like "a slap from another sun-soaked world" [is] the book’s true romance—the heady first taste of self-discovery, bitter and salty and sweet.
Leah Greenblatt - Entertainment Weekly


(Starred review.) [A] quintessential coming-of-age story.... [Tess] defines the foods and condiments that are sweet and those that are bitter—and her relationships...are ultimately just that... Danler evokes Tess’s...with deft skill. This novel is a treat.
Publishers Weekly


Danler's debut captures the wild abandon of youth set free in a environment where there are no rules. The characters are well drawn, realistic, and enigmatic. Tess's fresh outlook contrasts with the jaded lives of the other employees. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal


(Starred review.) From her very first sentences...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!
Kirkus Reviews