Man, this book stole quite a few hours of my life. And I’m still not 100% sure why I finished it. The protagonist arrives in New York City at age 22 and lands a job in “the best restaurant in the city.” Her name is Tess but she’s mostly called things like “BabyMonster” and “New Girl” and “cunt” by the fellow backwaiters, servers, cooks, and bartenders she comes to see as family. I thought maybe this book would be about working in a restaurant or about finding your way in the big city or coming to terms with your choices. It really was mostly a story of a young woman making terrible terrible destructive choices. Full stop. I had this feeling that Danler must have lived this to tell it so intimately. How on earth could an author conjure the details and the interior life of this character up without living it? It’s so horrible I can’t imagine her actually surviving it to write this well. Tess is a blank — we never see the details of her life except in the restaurant and they are a blur of drugs and the wretched emotions of insecurity and want and loneliness and abandonment. It really was awful and left me feeling empty and sad and so I’m still not sure if that’s a success for the author — was she so cunning as to write a book that would leave me feeling Exactly How the protaganist feels? Blurg. Want my hours back.
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