As I walked through the aisles of the soon-to-be-closed McNally Robinson Booksellers, a slim tome perched on a table caught my eye. Stewart O’Nan’s novel Last Night at the Lobster had moved from its alphabetical isolation in the literature section onto a recommended reads table — placed, no doubt, by a staffer who felt it befitted the foredoomed bookshop. The melancholic meditation on the final day in the life of an American chain restaurant seemed like a perfect farewell purchase from one of Calgary’s finest independent bookstores.

A journeyman writer of fiction and non-fiction, including a bestselling collaboration with Stephen King, O’Nan turns his sharp eye for detail towards a suburban restaurant in the far corner of a rundown New England mall. This surprisingly profound book chronicles general manager Manny DeLeon’s last shift at a Red Lobster he’s come to think of as his own, reflecting on what the place means to him, and what he’s meant to the people who work there. All the while, a fierce winter storm blows in off the ocean, making the absurd effort of opening the restaurant at all seem increasingly quixotic.

For such a tiny book, Last Night at the Lobster is absolutely packed with spot-on observations: the missing strip of moulding on the door of Manny’s Buick Regal; his morning ritual of smoking weed in the parking lot before opening up; the royal blue glow of the point-of-sale screen. O’Nan likewise has a finely tuned ear for the dialect of the northeast U.S., calling a black eye a “mouse,” while the restaurant’s elderly clientele are referred to as “cotton heads.” However, where O’Nan truly shines is in his characterization, sketching well-developed characters who will be instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever worked in a kitchen — from Roz, the lifelong waitress who’s fully vested in Darden Restaurant, Inc.’s pension plan, to Ty, the former military man who runs the kitchen like a ship, and Eddie, the special-needs employee who is the only one to ever actually punch in on time.

As Manny struggles to keep his near mutinous staff in line for one final dinner rush, he tries to figure out how to say goodbye to the waitress he loves while searching for the perfect gift for his pregnant girlfriend. These relationships are revealed in bits and pieces, in snatches of overheard conversations and half-described memories, an apt approach for a workplace drama. O’Nan profoundly understands the curious relationships that develop at work and, in a strange way, with work. Under his skilful hand, the restaurant becomes a character in the novel, and by novel’s end, only the most ardent anti-capitalist will be unmoved by the loss of the chain restaurant. For better or worse, after reading Last Night at the Lobster, you will never look at a Red Lobster the same way again.