"This slim debut novel…is the definition of small but mighty literature…Through deft writing and humor, Thammavongsa creates a world rich with individuality and understanding for the lives that surround us but that we may not at first see."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"A stylist in a nail salon, Ning is known as 'Susan' to her clients; yet a blazing ambition and inner life propel her in Thammavongsa’s slim, gimlet-eyed tale about one woman’s desires in an age of erasure.”
—Boston Globe
“In her 2020 story collection…Thammavongsa… sought to expand how the immigrant experience is portrayed in literature. Her novel does the same through the story of a retired boxer whose grinding job at a nail salon belies a rich and profound interior life.”
—The New York Times Fall Fiction Preview
"A powerful novel that is profoundly of the moment, this quick read...is not to be missed."
—Real Simple
“A soulful first novel…It is a delight to immerse oneself in the everyday drama of the salon's 'brightly lit box' with the rhythmic cadence of Thammavongsa's storytelling and the narrative spaces she creates for readers' imaginations to ignite."
—Shelf Awareness
“A former boxer turned salon owner…is the protagonist of this confident, ominous novel. Set over one day, this world of glossy, colorful beauty-making is told in an ice-cold voice.”
—W Magazine
“This exceptional novel, honed sharp as cuticle nippers, contains great wit and quick turns, up to the last sentence.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A stunning portrait of a solitary woman… Readers won’t easily forget this deeply intelligent narrative."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[An] insightful and witty first novel…Thammavongsa’s novel beautifully demonstrates her knack for developing strong characterizations. Looking at working women, culture, and relationships, the book portrays a diversity of experience that reminds of the common links of the human condition."
—Library Journal
“A razor-sharp portrait of emotional labor and buried longing, cutting through the polish of a nail salon to reveal the quiet truths beneath…Her mastery lies in what’s left unsaid and in the quiet power of a single, cutting sentence.”
—Booklist
"Pick a Color is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. In alchemical and captivating prose, this book orbits the steady flows of power and projection that exist between Ning, her employees and her clients. Love, death, joy, abandonment, deception and lust are all at stake in Susan's Nail Salon. The world of Pick a Color is shockingly intimate. Reading this book left me with an intense desire to touch a stranger's hands."
—Rita Bullwinkel, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Headshot
“This debut novel is a must for fans (like me) of Thammavongsa's intimate, deliciously tricky short stories. With dry humor and a keen eye for class, she's given us a hauntingly good book about the dignity and despair of work: the secret life of nail salons…When Thammavongsa writes, I read!”
—Ed Park, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams
“Pick a Color is a wickedly funny and moving novel by a superbly stylish writer. This is a book about intimacy and alienation, how othering limits our gaze, about the masks we wear, the instincts we hone, and the ways in which we are nonetheless created anew in each encounter. In a world so often drained of ethics and meaning, Souvankham narrows in on the contemporary rituals of our modern-day confessionals—and I couldn’t help but feel her narrator is a high priestess for this moment.”
—Avni Doshi, Booker shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar
“Only as masterful an ironist as Souvankham Thammavongsa could have pulled this off: a work of urgent and impassioned solidarity that is also a defiant, even pugnacious, assertion of narrative autonomy and technical control. Pick a Color is a knockout: every punch lands.”
—Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood
