First published 2025
Ning spent years as a boxer before she opened her nail salon. Now her wealthy clients know her only as Susan, one of the interchangeable workers who buff their nails and listen to their chatter. On this summer day, Ning moves through the familiar motions of manicures and pedicures alongside the other women her customers also call Susan. She clips and polishes while her clients talk around her as if she were invisible. But Ning watches everything. She understands the power games between her coworkers and sees through the surface conversations to the fears underneath. Her sharp mind catalogs the contradictions of her life as both an anonymous service worker and a keen observer of the privileged world that employs her. As the day progresses, the tension between who Ning really is and who her clients assume her to be builds toward a moment of reckoning.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Nail Salon
Period: Summer
192 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC