ANNOTATION #5: Literary Fiction

 

Last Night at the Lobster

Stewart O'Nan

2007

146 pages

Viking Press

 

Synopsis: The snow starts to fall as soon as Manny DeLeon arrives to open the Red Lobster one last time. For ten years the rhythms of managing this restaurant have ordered Manny’s thoughts and fueled his pride. Now, a few days before Christmas, Manny looks unhappily toward the future dictated by his corporate overlords when he will be transferred and demoted to assistant manager at the Olive Garden, separated forever from Jacqui, the waitress he still loves regardless of their doomed affair. In spite of the mounting blizzard outside and an indifferent staff who have already been fired, Manny is determined to squeeze meaning and satisfaction out of the lobster’s last night. O’Nan nails the culture of low-wage restaurant work, the interplay of hostess, server, chef, dishwasher, boss and customer, with realism, heart, and melancholy. 

 Literary Fiction Appeal: Last Night at the Lobster offers the staid realism often found in literary fiction. The details and various moving parts that make up operating a busy, or potentially busy, restaurant is outlined with the occasional use of industry jargon. O’nan’s literary style is subtly poetic, finding a sad beauty in the holiday lights on the lobster tank or the walk across the parking lot to the dying mall through the falling snow. Manny, the sympathetic and introspective protagonist, is relatable even to readers who aren’t familiar with the microcosm that is restaurant work. Although not a complex or experimental novel in form, literary fiction fans will appreciate Manny’s interior world and find much in his character to ponder philosophically. 

Pacing: The conventions of literary fiction and the reflective tone of this novel contribute to the story’s leisurely pacing. The reader moves through a single workday of routine actions, but Manny’s thoughtful dilemmas and the restaurant’s small incidents are profoundly compelling. The short page count contributes to a book that goes by quickly as we watch and wait, through desperate calm, for the inevitable end to arrive. 

Tone: The tone throughout Last Night at the Lobster is several levels of sad. This is a world of toil and obligation, of losing lottery tickets and cleaning the Frialator, not joy and Christmas spirit. Readers proceed with the understanding that a cathartic resolution isn’t in the cards for our hero. Instead, this a poignant story about regret, pessimism, uncertainty, loss, and getting up to go to work the next day. 

Setting/Frame: All the action is confined to the restaurant, the mall, and their adjoining parking lots and takes place entirely in the twelve hours the Red Lobster opens for the last time. The restaurant closure frames Manny’s thoughts and the mood of the staff. O’nan creates an atmospheric setting that is instantly recognizable yet special. His direct description transports the reader to a contemplative landscape of parking lots and access roads that most of us routinely neglect to notice. 

Read-Alikes: 

Always Happy Hour: Stories, by Mary Miller 

• Stories featuring struggles and social dynamics with a realistic focus on the “white working-class” 

Sugar Run, by Mesha Maren 

• Jodi McCarty must figure out a life and future after serving an 18 year prison sentence; bleak and character driven 

Caught, by Lisa Moore 

• This fast-paced story follows doomed David Slaney after a jail break as he tries to understand past failures and win back his girlfriend; an author I think should be more well known
  

There, There by Tommy Orange 

• This amazing books weaves together 12 characters representing the urban experiences of Native Americans who ultimately come together at the Oakland Powwow; haunting, character-driven, and atmospheric 

Non-Fiction 

Gig: Americans talk about their jobs at the turn of the millennium, edited by Marisa Bowe, John Bowe, and Sabin Streeter 

• Inspired by Studs Terkel’s classic Working, this book compiles the narratives of workers describing jobs both common and unusual in their own voices. A thoughtful and compelling glimpse into the working life of Americans, highly recommended! 

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain 

• Bourdain takes readers on a backstage tour of life in the commercial kitchen,  more wild and funnier than the scene at the Lobster, this memoir nevertheless explores the working life (and lifestyle) behind haute cuisine with honesty