Pick a Color
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.
“I live in a world of Susans. I got name tags for everyone who works at this nail salon, and on every one is printed the name 'Susan.'"
Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Color confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A world-weary salon manager reflects on her clients and herself in Souvankham Thammavongsa’s sharp and witty novel. Ning, an ex-boxer turned nail salon owner, runs a tight shop—all her employees wear name badges that say “Susan” and they’re all expected to look virtually indistinguishable. But the Susans still find time to laugh, bond, and gossip about their clients’ idiosyncrasies, all while Ning quietly harbors the most cutting barbs of all. Narrator Zoe Doyle has a masterful handle on the smart, acerbic writing here that reveals so much about Ning’s inner life. We get a sense of her difficulties with a previous employer and in her past boxing career, though Thammavongsa purposely leaves you to ponder all this from the same distance Ning keeps from her own pain. The effect is both empathetic and intriguing, with the audio experience making it feel like a psychological portrait being painted in real time. This is a fascinating examination of a character who expects to be overlooked by the world.
