Pick a Color - by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE

A USA Today Bestseller

From O. Henry Award winner and two-time Giller Prize 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.

Review Quotes

"Beneath its incredible cover, this novel's insightful depictions of privilege and the service industry inside are even more vibrant. Ning is a retired boxer who goes by 'Susan' at her nail salon -- as do all the other employees -- and she's a keen observer of everything around her. A cracklingly tense novel."--People Magazine, "31 Books That Made TIME's 100 Best Books of the Year and PEOPLE's Book Picks"

"Cooly observant novel, by a noted short-story writer...With dark humor and brief touches of tenderness, Thammavongsa's tableau of working-class life casts stock elements--a damaged narrator, a workforce composed entirely of nonwhite women--in an alienating glow."--The New Yorker

"Superb...The steady-paced, often mordantly funny Pick a Color explores the immigrant experience, the long tail of trauma, the indignities suffered by low-wage workers and their companion emotions: loneliness, loss and grief."--Wall Street Journal

"Pick a Color is another example of all the things that make Thammavongsa's craft shine: its airtight form, soulful characterization, and the evocative portrayal of the mundane...The novel quietly burns with the power of human love and friendship."

--Electric Literature

"Pick a Color, the taut, tricksy novel by Laotian-Canadian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa...is a feat of economy...Under 200 pages, [it] punches above its weight. Thammavongsa's minimalism conveys a range of tones and psychological nuances as she grapples with the stubborn prejudices of class. She feints like a prize fighter, tipping in clues to her protagonist's past...We watch Ning evolve in real time, a process revealed through sharp-edged scenes and lacunae. She prickles with frustrations and a desire to connect, limned by Thammavongsa's acid wit..."--Washington Post

"It would be easy to judge this book by its incredible cover. But the insightful depictions of privilege and the service industry inside are even more vibrant...A cracklingly tense novel."--People Magazine

"A powerful novel that is profoundly of the moment, this quick read...is not to be missed."--Real Simple

"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

"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

"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

"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 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 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

"[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

"This exceptional novel, honed sharp as cuticle nippers, contains great wit and quick turns, up to the last sentence."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"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

"A stunning portrait of a solitary woman... Readers won't easily forget this deeply intelligent narrative."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"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

About the Author

Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, and was raised and educated in Toronto, where she now lives. How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the novel Pick a Color, winner of the 2025 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, and NOON.