Book: "Last Night at the Lobster"

Writer: Stewart O'Nan
A moving short novel about a failing Red Lobster on its last day of business in a crummy New England mall. O'Nan has a gift for guiding the reader through a world--in this case a tacky chain restaurant--we don't know much about. He also creates characters not normally met in contempoary fiction (Richard Russo, Russell Banks, Stephen King and others explore the working class, but so many literary novels these days suffer from more narcissism than I'm ready to accept). Beautiully written, "Last Night at the Lobster" is populated with people you care about--and believe they exist in real life. Because they do.