Book Review: Last Night at the Lobster
Jo-ann Greene - The Sunday News
Mar 17, 2008
If book jackets had buttons, they'd be popping, because few authors produce anything under 300 pages anymore. That might be why the slim spine beckoned from among the obese ones on the library's new-book shelf.
Plenty of required reading awaited. But here was a book by a well- regarded author whom I'd never read. And it was only 146 pages - half the fat. I can do this, I told myself.
I'm glad I did. Stewart O'Nan's novel Last Night at the Lobster was at once spare but rich, sustaining me for weeks with moments of reflection on the life of Manny DeLeon, manager of a Red Lobster Restaurant that's forced to close just before Christmas.
O'Nan's character study unfolds in under 24 hours. It's the restaurant's final day of business, and it comes with the usual headaches and glitches, complicated by a brewing snowstorm.
Short-staffed and fresh out of flounder, Manny is determined to go out serving the public to the best of his ability and giving even his most marginal employees the benefit of the doubt.
All of this is complicated by his creeping sense of failure, not just with the business but with a personal life that has him vacillating between two women. Add to that his desperate attempt to find a Christmas gift for one significant other at the last minute.
Somehow he copes admirably with a busload of sick Japanese tourists, a broken credit-card machine, a booze-stealing bartender, elderly customers who pocket his sugar packets and stiff his waitresses, and an obnoxious toddler with an even more obnoxious mother.
It's all in a day's work, but hanging over this day is a sense of disappointment. This was supposed to be the culmination of all the care and effort he's put into his difficult job and even more difficult employees over the years.
Dutifully though, Manny is prepared to move on, becoming the assistant manager of the Olive Garden down the road. The reader wishes him well.
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