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Pick a Colour

A Novel

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Pick a Colour

Written by: Souvankham Thammavongsa
Narrated by: Zoe Doyle
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About this listen

 #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2025 GILLER PRIZE

Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • The New Yorker • CBC • Indigo • TIME • Kirkus • Publishers Weekly • Real Simple • The Boston Globe

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labour, and class. An intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.

“One of the greatest novels I have ever read.” —Rita Bullwinkel
“A knockout: every punch lands.” —Eleanor Catton

Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound depth. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complicated power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Told over a single day, with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms. Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Sports World Literature
All stars
Most Relevant
Nothing happened! Like, at all. I was so disappointed. The narrator needed some enthusiasm. I got so bored by the sound of her voice.

The title

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I usually appreciate slow moving stories or narratives like this but this one seemed to have no focus . I was waiting for something to happen to give a high point to the story but nothing ever happened.

Slow and rambling

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How this book can qualify for any award is simply inconceivable! Listening to this thing is like watching paint dry. No. I think I would rather watch the paint. Basic, presumptuous, full of offensive stereotypes, has no point or plot- unbearable.

Giller Prize? Why?

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This book won an award and I was keen to listen. The story is from the perspective of a woman grossly focused on her nail salon. She minimizes herself using the excuse that this is how her customers see her,however; it's all her. I'm now confident the nail girls are talking about me when I get my nails done. The entire time I was waiting to see where the story is going to learn the plot. There is no plot. The story ends with such a minute victory that I was disappointed in having wasted my time.

I don't get it

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I hadn’t expected to like this book as much as I did. The entire story is a single - and rather uneventful- day at a nail salon. But the characters are so lush and the story so beautifully written that I found myself hanging on every word.

Beautiful moment in time

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