Sasha Hom Credit: Courtesy Sidework is an immaculate debut from Vermont author Sasha Hom. Even before splitting it open, a reader can sense that they are about to savor a delicacy, a perfectly ripened work. The inside is clean and buttery. Finely chopped sentences are plated with bold amounts of white space. Chapter breaks are served frequently and right on schedule. The novella even has a pleasing heft when balanced on the tips of one’s fingers. The story follows a Korean American mother and adoptee who lives on the West Coast in a van with her four children, two dogs and husband. While the dad homeschools the kids from various parking lots, the mom hustles to earn bread waiting tables. These details seem to echo Hom’s own life: She, too, is a Korean adoptee who homeschools her four children off the grid, in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Hom’s writing is so intimate, so precise, you’d be forgiven for thinking Sidework is entirely autobiographical. It’s practically photographic in its ability to capture the minutiae of an inconspicuous life, down to the biscuits and “gray gravy with chunks of the unknown and not-spoken-of mixed in.” The entirety of the novella, published in 2025, is confined to a single morning shift at a restaurant that is fascinatingly unexceptional. The diner is nameless, as are the narrator and most of the recurring characters: “C-girl,” “the boss (wife),” “the Suit in the Backroom” and the indomitable sidekick, “The Barista with Lyme.” While the plot only covers seven hours, the story itself encompasses a vast life. Seismic events peek through the frayed seams of the workday. Fried eggs might hint at an ATM robbery. Coloring books may recall images of hangman’s knots. The pacing is simultaneously slow and whip-fast. In clumsier hands, this combo would risk being an exhausting read. But the writing in Sidework is so deft, a reader barely notices that their coffee was topped off — twice! — as they were turning the pages. “The owner — the wife — yells at me to slow down,” our protagonist explains. “The cooks tell me to hurry up.” The mother’s life is a relentless push-pull from opposing priorities. She stands braced in the center of these forces like a lighthouse, worn down but still in operation, still able to provide periodic glints of sardonic humor and maternal care. But mostly, she’s running on the steady rhythm of survival. There’s not much air for anything else. Sidework by Sasha Hom, Black Lawrence Press, 155 pages. $11.99-21.95. Credit: Courtesy The book is named after the Sisyphean tasks she must do between serving guests, including “Put ketchups on tables,” “Start coffee (at 12-min b/f7 only!)” and “Turn on ACCEPTABLE morning music,” all decreed by the disembodied omnipresences that are “the mgr.,” “the cameras” and “the memo behind the computer consul,” the one that shouts: “SERVERS! Do ALL of your SIDEWORK. That means EVERYTHING!” These menial chores feel just as crucial for her survival as escaping the local wildfires. Sidework is never just on the side. It’s crammed into the crowded nucleus of her life, where everything is in a 200-way tie for the rank of Highest Priority. Locating more Splenda packets is as dire as finding an apartment, which is just as important as taking out the vats of butter (“first!”), keeping the dogs from destroying the car seats, grabbing creamers for the two-top, getting any ounce of sleep and refilling Wynona’s silverware bucket. Her children need food, but so does the Suit; can’t let the Suit in the Backroom go hungry, now can we? As a writer, Hom lassos this cyclone masterfully. Memories and dreams and poems and play-by-plays all swirl together in a symphonic blend. In the messiness of the sidework vortex, the narrator may have to clarify whether she’s referring to, say, her child or her dog, but the need for clarity speaks more clearly than the clarification itself. Sidework provides a unique vantage on modern American poverty and how this poverty relates to the system that incubates it. The restaurant owners donate free meals to their patrons during a local disaster, yet they rebuke the staff for pocketing leftovers from dirty plates; the unspoken, chummy rules of customer service prevent workers from ever sharing their realities; no matter the many fistfuls of cash you might earn as you bust ass waiting tables, that income will never count in the eyes of landlords or lenders, because that money isn’t as real as everyone else’s. Despite its grounding in the material world, Sidework also flirts with the supernatural but only as much as any of our lives ever do. The more you sink into the smooth flow state of Hom’s writing, the more you begin to sense an eerie presence that lurks in the shadowy hallways above the kitchen, or sometimes sits alone by the window reading a newspaper, or stands dead still at the very edge of the story, or maybe the center, observing, talking to itself, or maybe talking to the narrator, or maybe talking to you. But this shadow is not to be addressed directly, whatever it is. Because it’s the sidework we must stay focused on. Always do the sidework. Excerpt from Sidework “[…]That’s the main reason I stopped having more kids. I just felt like I could not brush another set of teeth.” “I feel you on that one. Even one is enough.” “Well, not to mention our own. I mean, I don’t see how people can work full-time and be anything other than employees. Like, how do two working parents ever get to be parents?” “Did you hear what happened to that woman from the Buddhist temple and her two kids during that last heavy rain?” she asks. “How they drowned?” “Yeah. I keep a small hatchet in my car now, just in case.” I think of the headlines on The Times in the Grim Reaper’s paper. “Don’t you think we should teach our children how to die beforehand? I mean, think of all the things we prepare them for that might not ever happen, like college.” I try out my fire drill theory on her, but she just stares at me blankly, blinking hard a couple of times. “Matcha Latte. With coconut milk, right?” She nods. I release her water bottle to the table. On second thought, I pick the bottle back up and tilt, pouring water into her glass, something I never do for a customer. The post Book Review: ‘Sidework,’ Sasha Hom appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less