- Published: 16 June 2020
- ISBN: 9781784163983
- Imprint: Black Swan
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 240
- RRP: $27.99
The Waiter
- Published: 16 June 2020
- ISBN: 9781784163983
- Imprint: Black Swan
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 240
- RRP: $27.99
An elegantly made parody, embossed with an abundance of humor, sharp observations and piercing social criticism . . . truly remarkable.
Dagsavisen
Utterly wonderful . . . a novel you will have a hard time putting out of your mind . . . a gem.
Hamar Arbeiderblad
It seems so effortlessly and candidly written, but truly it numbers among the most uncompromising works I have read in very long time. A unique read many ought to treat themselves to.
VG
Bringing to mind Mervyn Peake and Wes Anderson, with some of Nathanael West’s deadpan grotesque, this is a beguiling, quirky entertainment.
Kirkus
As if The Remains of the Day had been written by Kingsley Amis, The Waiter is a brilliantly exquisite view into an uproariously vigilant life of service and protocol. In Faldbakken’s skilled hands, a mordant, lonely waiter in a declining restaurant becomes a raw, scrupulous force, powering one of the most purely entertaining novels I've read in years. This book is a meal you won’t want to finish.
J. Ryan Stradal
Good fun - but you sense a more earnest point, too, as [the waiter] snatches rare downtime to scroll nervily through the jumble of disaster footage and cat videos flooding into his phone, making the faded grandeur of his 19th-century establishment a symbol of broader, post-internet worries over what we've lost.
Daily Mail
A sly amuse bouche of a novel . . . its atmosphere and observations are deliciously rich.
Mail on Sunday
Faldbakken has a way with non-action. He builds a delicious tension between the paucity of events and the lavishness of the technique with which they are described.
New York Times
A quirky slice of life
Los Angeles Times