The Waitress Was New

October 22, 2007
For his U.S. debut, Fabre offers a poignantly funny, slender slice of a French waiter’s life. Pierre, 56 and divorced, has worked at the suburban Parisian cafe Le Cercle for so long that he’s become a fixture. He’s a good listener, too, particularly to the boss’s wife, heartbroken over her husband’s seeming affair with the young head waitress, Sabrina. As a long shift unrolls, the boss and Sabrina are absent from the busy cafe, leaving Senegalese cook Amédée fuming and Pierre and the title’s fill-in waitress scrambling. The next day brings big changes, and loyal, orderly Pierre must suddenly measure out his mortality by the pay stubs he has hoarded over his working life. In Fabre’s patient, deliberative layering, the details of Pierre’s quotidian life assume an affecting solidity and significance.

December 15, 2007
The title and the first sentence of this absorbing, ultimately profound novella are identical and herald the end of 56-year-old, very single Pierres 30-plus years as a barman in the suburbs of Paris. Of course, he doesnt know that the end is nigh, though he knows something is afoot. The boss has been noticeably interested in the new waitress' predecessor, and the boss wife has been preoccupied. The boss ducks out before lunch, which is more than usually hectic, and his wife decamps as soon as possible after the rush. Next day, the boss isnt back, and his wife comes to work only just before things get desperate. A few days proceed in the same manner, and then the boss wife leaves, too, closing the caf' down, temporarily. An unforeseen yet unsurprising development brings story, caf', and Pierres job to an end. Fabre tells the whole story from Pierres deliberately unassuming, socially inconsequential perspective. By the last page, Pierre has become not Everyman but all-too-common man.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)