The Waitress Was New

I love the title of this book, but it's not about the waitress. The narrator is Pierre, a fifty-six-year-old barman at Le Cercle, a busy café in the suburbs of Paris.Pierre is a fixture at Le Cercle, where's he's worked steadily for the last eight years. But there are no fixtures in life. One day the boss disappears, and his wife after him. What now?The translator of this book must be good. You can almost hear the sad lilt of French in the English prose. That's important, because style is the real substance of this little novel. Pierre has had his troubles in life - love and loss, sickness and drunkenness - but he's on the other side of "all that love business" when we meet him, alone and "seeing nothing more to come."In his own words, Fabre celebrates "places or people who have somehow been overlooked." His subject is the everyday. Don't look for excitement here, just a certain poignant sense of life slipping by. In a larger sense, of course, Pierre's situation represents the human condition.I'd like to try another novel by Fabre, but this seems to be the only one in English so far.Since I'm frivolous enough to care about how a book feels in the hand, I'll just mention that this book is elegantly designed and nicely produced, as refined as the writing within.

A veteran bartender of Le Cercle, Pierre, lives a simple life. He is the unassuming listener of customer stories and covers up for the boss of the cafe when he disappears for a day or two with his latest fling, and helps out at the cafe until he returns.On the day a new waitress is hired at the cafe, the boss disappears in the afternoon without word to his wife or Pierre. Bu this time he doesn't come back the day after, or in a week. In the meantime, Pierre has to suddenly not only manage the cafe, the new waitress and the cook, but he is also put in the position of suddenly being the boss's wife's confidant and having to comfort her.Oh and he's worried enough to try looking for his boss as well. Before long, his life is thrown into upheaval at an unexpected announcement and he takes stock of his life on a day he had not seen coming.This poignant study of Pierre and his solitude highlights a person who is overlooked, but who is also at times taken advantage of.

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump, THE WAITRESS WAS NEW is a novella set on the outskirts of modern-day Paris in a small cafe owned by a husband and wife. When the husband disappears, the wife and tiny staff try to forge on: Amedee the Senegalese cook, Madeleine the new waitress, and the reflective narrator Pierre, a bartender who's nearing retirement after a complicated life.I love work-based stories and this one is melancholy and full, very much like Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster. The little book itself is also physically lovely -- it's one of a few I've borrowed from the library and then purchased a copy to keep. And it's Fabre's only story available in English; I hope more will be translated.

This is the first book I've ever read by this author. I wasn't disappointed at all. I would recommended this book to anyone that wants to know and see the real Paris, France, the one that only the locals know.

Reminiscent of Remains of the Day, The Waitress Was New takes us into the mind of an aging waiter in his last few good years as a working man. He has many years of experience with the world and he has become a philosopher, a psychologist of the best sort, almost a seer, able to predict with surprising accuracy the moves of the weak and the strong.Funny. Thoughtful.

Delivery was super fast. Everything's exactly as described. Definitely order again

Great !

Pierre is a bartender, a sweet man who has almost reached the age at which he could retire. He loves what he does, it is what he lives for and how he breathes. This book humble, yet so triumphant and full of life at the same time! It is very real, no huge ups and downs, no drum rolls, no brass bands. It is just what the author Dominique Fabre has intended: plain, simple, beautiful. He aims to share the life of a person on the margins, or someone that would not usually be interesting enough to write about, someone who you may not even notice. For some reason it feels like he could have chosen me or you in choosing Pierre, it is a person that is not worthy, and yet he never says that he is. It's pureness is very attractive.The Waitress Was New drives the reader a desire to know this raw individual, Pierre. To learn more about him and his situation, and what will become of him in the end. The novel is human, and real and is not full of dramatic effect moments or overly sentimental junk. It is a story of a regular bartender, in a regular place, doing regular things. It is the way that Fabre conveys it all that is interesting...you dive down deep and come up with your fists full, and at the end of this novel he leaves you wishing for more, but knowing at the same time that it was the way it should be.For the full 117 pages I was engulfed in reading this book it is so full of heart and personality. I am always more interested in the books that are about people that seem real to me and this is definitely one of those. It is about people-watching, living, loving, dying, old age, changes and sticking through it. I loved it. Here are some quotes for you that I thought were really great:"I'm a fixture around here, people realize that. I served a few beers, brought the school kids their coffee, two coffees plus three glasses of water, and the girl greeted me with a peck on the cheek" (p. 16)."I don't look outside too much because everything that matters to me in life always ends up sitting down at my bar, but just then I had a feeling, and I looked out toward the street. Yes, it was going to rain" (p. 22)." I get off at seven but I'm never a stickler about leaving on time, what have I got to do at home? I'm just a barman, and the longer I stay on the more life goes by in the best possible way. So there we are" (p. 38)."They come and go, for the most part. Let the world turn around us, beyond our spotless bars, in the end every day will be carefully wiped away to make room for the next. That's why I make myself watch the late-night news on Channel 3, you can't just forget everything, after all" (p. 98).