Review of the Day: Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa

In Greek, metaphor literally means to transfer or carry across. At its most basic, a metaphor is transferring the meaning of one thing to another. More on metaphor in a moment.

Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short novel is a first person story of a single work day for Ning, a Laotian woman, who operates a small nail salon in Toronto. All of her employees are from her country, but she calls them all Susan. In addition, she insists that they all have their hair cut to the same length. At this point, I was expecting the book to be moderately interesting.

What I did not expect in the book is for the sport of boxing to be invoked. Ning was a boxer, presumably in Laos, before she opened a salon in Canada. Consider this quote:

“I always thought boxing was about hitting something hard, but when I was there everyone was alone hitting lightly. Punching no one but the air in front of them. Bobbing and weaving. Everyone’s opponent was invisible, a ghost. Figures without faces or bodies. Seen only to the person fighting. What was at stake was imagined and made up in the moment” (location 385).

Ning thinks about boxing often:

“We’re not in the ring. There isn’t a fight, but Mai [one of the Susans] has a way of making it feel like there’s one around the corner and I better be prepared. I don’t meet up with Murch [Ning’s former coach] any more, but it feels like he’s been reborn through her. He occasionally sends texts or calls, wants to talk about old times. If it were still up to him he’d probably have me do road work. Have me out there pounding the pavement” (location 569).

Other writers have written about boxing including Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises). He would invoke boxing as a way of comparing himself with other writers; “I would not be so foolish as to get in the ring with Tolstoy.” Norman Mailer, another very masculine presenting novelist, also wrote a lot about boxing. To invoke a female perspective, more recently, Rita Bullwinkle’s novel Headshot is about eight teenage women in a boxing contest. Add Souvankham Thammavongsa to the list of writers who have written about boxing in new and interesting ways.

To return the topic of metaphor, Aristotle said that that “it is characteristic of a well directed EUSTOKHOU mind to observe the likeness even in things very different” (Rhetoric 1412a17-21). Certainly Laotian women working at a nail salon and boxing are very different. Aristotle also said SEMEION GAR EUPHUIAS TO EU METAPHEREIN (Poetics 1459a5-8). Making good metaphors is a sign of natural talent (EUPHIA) or genius.

Pick a Color is one the best books I have read in months. And, no, you do not need to have read Aristotle to enjoy this book.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this book via Net Galley. All opinions are my own.

Scheduled for publication 30 September 2025. epub. 208 pgs. Read September 2025.