This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and a Korean research center for haunted objects.<\/p>\n
Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 192 pp., $28, September 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and a Korean research center for haunted objects.<\/p>\n Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 192 pp., $28, September 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span> If Lao Canadian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa\u2019s debut novel were a play, it would be a relatively simple production. Pick a Color<\/em><\/a> takes place over the course of one day at a nail salon that is presumably in a Canadian or U.S. metropolitan area and features a small cast of characters\u2014no set or costume changes required. Against this basic backdrop, the nail technicians make observations about race, class, and labor. The salon becomes a laboratory for them to push the limits of deceptively rigid North American social norms.<\/p>\n The protagonist and narrator of Pick a Color<\/em> is Ning, a 41-year-old retired boxer who is now the proprietor of a nail salon called Susan\u2019s. Although Ning\u2019s employees have their own names\u2014Annie, Mai, and Noi\u2014all four of them wear name tags that simply read \u201cSusan.\u201d (\u201cNone of our clients notice,\u201d says Ning.) She treats the salon like a boxing ring, guided by the work ethic that her coach drilled into her: \u201cDon\u2019t you go looking for their pity. Pity don\u2019t pay.\u201d<\/p>\n Ning appears to have endured past hardship. For unspecified reasons, she is missing her left ring finger. But Ning makes the best of her nine remaining digits. She is proudly single and figures that she will never need to accommodate a wedding band anyway. (\u201cI am alone because I want to be,\u201d she says.) Having a gap between her middle and pinkie fingers also makes Ning a better technician: There is \u201cmore space to perch a client\u2019s toe or fingernail to paint.\u201d<\/p>\n The juxtaposition between Ning\u2019s rugged hands and those that she buffs and oils forms the basis for Pick a Color<\/em>\u2019s scrutiny of interclass dynamics. Many of Ning\u2019s clients don\u2019t even realize that she is missing a finger. \u201cTo notice that, you have to be looking at me,\u201d Ning says during one interaction with a client. \u201cShe knows the nail color she wants, her friends, where to sit, where to pay. She even notices the street outside. The time. But not me.\u201d<\/p>\n To counterbalance the rudeness, entitlement, indifference, and occasional sexual harassment that they encounter, Ning and the Susans gossip throughout the day in \u201cour language.\u201d The technicians offer crude live commentary about the six-figure salaries, private school tuition, and maybe-cheating husbands that unsuspecting clients ramble about in English. \u201cThey come for the talk,\u201d Ning says. \u201cAnd you\u2019d be surprised what people tell you when they think you are a stranger and they are never going to see you again.\u201d<\/p>\n Ning makes fun of clients she thinks have funny names, such as a woman named Eileen. (\u201cEye-lean. It makes me think of my optometrist.\u201d) Customer Vanessa, who goes by Van, is not spared either. (\u201cI didn\u2019t think anyone wanted to be called anything like a vehicle.\u201d) Ning also has opinions on the idea of \u201cself-care\u201d that brings so many people into her salon: \u201cI don\u2019t like that term,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s more like my-care. I\u2019m the one sitting here, doing all the caring.\u201d<\/p>\n Thammavongsa never reveals which language Ning and her colleagues speak, or where exactly the nail salon is located. She only drops subtle hints, mentioning transactions in dollars, a client who is a baseball player, and a \u201clittle taco place a few doors down.\u201d But perhaps that relative ubiquity is the point: The fact that Ning\u2019s nail salon could be anywhere in North America is what makes Pick a Color<\/em> all the more unsettling.\u2014Allison Meakem<\/em><\/p>\n Bora Chung, trans. Anton Hur (Algonquin Books, 208 pp., $18.99, September 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span> In Bora Chung\u2019s Midnight Timetable<\/em><\/a>, the horrors are almost beside the point. Never mind the sheep with gaping surgical wounds or the cursed sneaker that threatens to squash a miniature version of its wearer. The Institute that houses these haunted objects is a reprieve from the real world for many of its employees.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that there were no strange things happening whatsoever,\u201d one worker, who was previously forced to undergo conversion therapy and cast out by a family of religious zealots, tells another character. \u201cIt\u2019s just that my life has always been full of strange things.\u201d<\/p>\n His remark gets at the heart of Chung\u2019s novel made up of a series of ghost stories, elegantly translated by Anton Hur. Rendered in taut and restrained prose and inspired by Korean and Slavic literature, these stories are replete with undead cats, stairs that lead to imaginary halls, and satin fabric that is haunted by the horrors that Kaya noble families faced at the hands of the Silla in 6th-century Korea.<\/p>\n The Institute and its objects provide the scaffolding for Chung\u2019s elaborate tales of human greed, grudges, and violence. As the narrator remarks after recounting the paranormal events that tore apart a man\u2019s life, \u201cthat\u2019s where a completely different and a much more ordinary type of family story began, one that is not a ghost story, but perhaps the scariest story of all.\u201d The overall effect is as riotous as it is unsettling.<\/p>\n Chung, whose short story collection Cursed Bunny<\/em> was short-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize, once said in an interview that when she writes, she leans on the principle: \u201cWhen in doubt, go against logic and\/or common sense.\u201d It\u2019s not a bad strategy, in a world as nonsensical as ours. Midnight Timetable<\/em> does what the best of horror, sci-fi, and other genre writing can achieve: It renders our present realities strange again.\u2014Chloe Hadavas<\/em><\/p>\n September Releases, In Brief<\/strong><\/p>\n E.Y. Zhao\u2019s debut novel, Underspin<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, pieces together the tragic life of a table tennis wunderkind. Indian novelist Kiran Desai provides a literary love story for our globalized world with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. In Nathan Harris\u2019s Amity<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, two formerly enslaved siblings traverse the postbellum U.S. South and deserts of Mexico. Mia Couto\u2019s The Cartographer of Absences<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw, traces the collapse of Mozambique\u2019s colonial regime. In Natsuo Kirino\u2019s Swallows<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, a young woman in Tokyo turns to surrogacy to make ends meet.<\/p>\n British literary juggernaut Ian McEwan\u2019s 18th novel, What We Can Know<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, forays into speculative fiction in 22nd-century England. Good and Evil and Other Stories<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the latest collection by National Book Award-winning Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, is translated into English by Megan McDowell. A young man navigates life and love in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in Lilas Taha\u2019s Waseem<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. In Defne Suman\u2019s The Last Apartment in Istanbul<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, seven decades of Turkish politics are told through the eyes of one Greek man. And Italian Mexican writer Fabio Mor\u00e1bito\u2019s short story collection, The Shadow of the Mammoth<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, is translated into English by Curtis Bauer.\u2014CH This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and a Korean research center for haunted objects. Pick a Color: A Novel Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 192 pp., $28, September 2025) This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[1114,18563,18564,18562,30,12263,825,11751,1542,17232,18560,18561,18565],"class_list":["post-28271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-books","tag-bora","tag-chungs","tag-color","tag-culture","tag-fp-weekend","tag-midnight","tag-north-america","tag-pick","tag-south-korea","tag-souvankham","tag-thammavongsas","tag-timetable"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-September-2025.png?w=1000",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and a Korean research center for haunted objects. Pick a Color: A Novel Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 192 pp., $28, September 2025) This month, we\u2019re getting to know the employees of a fictional North American nail salon and…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28273,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28271\/revisions\/28273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pick a Color: A Novel<\/em>
<\/em><\/h3>\n
\n The book cover for Pick a Color
\n <\/a><\/p>\nMidnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories<\/em><\/h3>\n
\n The book cover for Midnight Timetable
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"