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Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa review – behind the scenes at the nail salon

This impressive novel shows how war, colonialism and migration play out in a small room where everyone’s name tag says SusanPick a Colour, the first novel from Laotian-Canadian poet and short-story writer Souvankham Thammavongsa, takes place over one summer’s day in a nail bar; implicitly in Canada, but it could be in any city. The narrative potential of such businesses, where customers pay for a particular service and expect to receive other kinds of care, has been explored in films and novels set in taxis, hairdressers and, in Katja Oskamp’s Marzahn, Mon Amour, a chiropody clinic. Such settings open rich questions: who has the power, the one who pays or the one who shapes the customer’s body, often with alarmingly sharp implements? How human can such exchanges of cash for care or “beauty” be? What do we buy and what do we sell in these transactions?The novel sets out its stall plainly. Narrated by Ning, the salon owner and a retired boxer, t...


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