pairs well with...(part one)

Exploring the beauty of companion books and the stories they tell individually.

It’s only natural to crave a continuation of something you swore you’d savor—the novel you finished in three days, pages dog-eared and passages underlined ad nauseam. You trust and respect the writer’s decision to end the story where they did, but you can pick up where you left off with an entirely different author.

To combat the loss of finishing something so good you wish you could read it again for the first time, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite literary pairings. Today I’ll be sharing two novels near and dear to my heart, that capture the harsh truths of growing up.

coming of age

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler and Writers & Lovers by Lily King

“I wanted to say, my life is full. I chose this life because it's a constant assault of color and taste and light and it's raw and ugly and fast and it's mine. And you'll never understand. Until you live it, you don't know.”

I first saw the not-quite-Millennial-pink hardcover of Sweetbitter in an Instagram photo—comfortably nestled in the pocket of an airplane seat. I crossed paths with the paperback version at Barnes & Noble in 2018, and my fate as a Stephanie Danler admirer was sealed. I’ll read anything she writes, even her grocery lists—luckily her newsletter, Write What, is the next best thing.

The extended metaphor of taste is what initially caught my attention in Sweetbitter, as did Danler’s use of poetic language interspersed between the novel’s four sections (Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring). Food is hypnotic, sensual. Chaos is deliberate— especially for our 22-year-old narrator, Tess, who wants to forget her past and become a new person, despite only having an outline of the latter.

Writing restaurants well, from a place of admiration and animosity, is no small feat, and arguably hasn’t been done since Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton. It’s rare to find a book that articulates the service industry, or rather, its fine dining counterpart, in such a provocative, poetic way—especially from a woman's perspective.

While taking place in different cities and time periods, Sweetbitter and Writers & Lovers both chronicle a woman’s coming of age against the harsh, hot, and fast-paced backdrop of restaurant shifts.

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”

Writers & Lovers by the novelist Lily King came into my life as a gut punch in March 2020, three months after I entered the world with an English degree. The narrator, Casey, is 31 and six years into a novel that she is convinced will change her luck when she finishes it. On top of this, debt collectors are garnishing her wages, and she is grieving the sudden death of her mother. Casey’s omnipresent anxiety about her future makes you feel as if you are in her body yourself—King skillfully places you wherever Casey is physically or emotionally.

Sweetbitter and Writers & Lovers work so well together because they both capture the loneliness that comes with keeping a dream alive, age be damned. Tess and Casey wrestle with choosing between passion and practicality, whether it be through the men they date or the way they make a living. We get a glimpse of Casey’s past as she recounts the friends who got over writing “like the flu” and moved on to law school, real estate, wealthy spouses.

And yet, both women in these stories approach day-to-day life with such poignancy—the ache to know more (and be more), the sacredness of their off-the-clock routines (Tess eating olives out of a jar while reading wine books, Casey heating up a lemon cake on a hot plate in her potting shed apartment), geese on the Charles River, the sun rising and setting over the Williamsburg Bridge, vivid descriptions of the people they serve.

Despite the frustration you will inevitably feel towards them and their choices, you can’t help but root for our heroines—and wonder what they will taste next.