Sweetbitter
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In honor of the 10 year anniversary of this book blog, I’ve asked a few VIP book lovers to write guest reviews. This review is by Callie Jones, one of my oldest friends. We basically had our own French salon where we talked literature late into the night on the floor of her NYC apartment. Here’s her review of Sweetbitter:
“Taste, Chef said, is all about balance. The sour, the salty, the sweet, the bitter. Now your tongue is coded. A certain connoisseurship of taste, a mark of how you deal with the world, is the ability to relish the bitter, to crave it even, the way you do the sweet,” Sweetbitter, page 17.
If you asked me which author I wished I could emulate, I would say, Stephanie Danler. I rarely re-read books firmly believing too many exist to waste time returning, but I’ve read Stephanie’s novel three times. First, at a similar age to the protagonist, Tess, when I too had arrived in Brooklyn with no friends, no job, and no money at 22. Sweetbitter is a classic Bildungsroman, a coming of age, that perfectly encapsulates the highs and lows of moving to a new place and trying to find yourself. This book is your first line of coke, your Boss swirling your wine for you when he says “you’re doing it wrong,” the first time you taste caviar on potato chips. It’s the first time you give yourself permission to take. And it’s the implied things too—the many eyes tracing you as an adult woman, what’s left unsaid when you’re falling in love and words fail you.
Every time I read it, I want to become a sommelier. And a few days pass and I pour my cheap Cab that has lived open for too long in the fridge. The whims disappear. Which is in a way much your 20s. The passing whims of so many, trying to navigate what they want to do. Not realizing, the doing is the point. The real beauty is romanticizing the mundane stuff. Like when Tess says her last meal would simply be “toast.” The big wins are rare. But Tess, under the tutelage of an older colleague, Simone, is taught to find beauty in the every day. That your “palate” is actually created by figuring out what the hell you love, remaining curious, pushing yourself, allowing yourself the opportunity to desire. “The joy of connecting,” my boss once said to me. We all work for the “joy of connecting.” The reader assumes Tess will become Simone but without revealing too much, Simone’s fatal flaw is stifling herself, staying at the Restaurant for too long, fearing change, stuck in a toxic relationship with herself and those around her. She refines her palate and stops. Staving off complacency is a life long pursuit.
Inevitably, Tess falls in love with Jake, the moody, bartender who quotes Keats and lives downtown. We’ve all dated him. Tess finds Jake irresistible as she confuses indifference and conflict with love, passion with violence. It’s a fine line, one she crosses many times, as must of us have. Reading Sweetbitter as an adult with a fully formed frontal lobe, I have no patience for Jake. In fact, I want to punch him in the groin. As Simone notes, the Jakes of the world are damaged men that wantonly perpetuate pain. They force you to listen as they drone on about string theory, but everything you cherish, they crush. A kind “f*** you” from me to all the Jakes of this world. In your 30s you don’t tolerate them, which is why they are usually with the young Tesses. As our queen, Taylor Swift sings, “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age.”
Ultimately, Sweetbitter shows how complicated relationships are as it perfectly encapsulates the cacophony of growing up, the fragility of trying to figure out who you are, the time of your life when things get too bitter, you do, in fact, crave the sweet. Tess tries on wine, drugs, men, clothes, personalities and her colleagues bear witness to everything that makes her uniquely “her,” while showing that we all aren’t that different after all. From the front of house to the back of house at the Restaurant, each character has similar wants, needs, desires. Again, no matter the age, desire never abates which I think cities like New York have a way of clarifying. Typing from my apartment, living with my non-Jake boyfriend, it’s funny how much your desires change with age. Now the mundane routine of stability gets me out of bed in the morning. Tess would hate it. But it’s something she will understand one day when she becomes fully self-possessed. Becoming is the greatest creative project of life and it’s an ongoing craft.
As one of my favorite artists once noted, “‘Do you know what the real subject is?’ And we both said at the same time, ‘Freedom.’ Then we hugged each other again. Of course that's what it's about. Freedom. That's the only possession an artist has--freedom to do whatever you can imagine.” That’s what Tess is ultimately striving for, the freedom to be whoever she wants to be. Sweetbitter ultimately shows you can build your life however you imagine it. The world has to accept whoever you present yourself to be (as long as you demand it). I give Sweetbitter 5 out of 5 flames.
