Congratulations on Everything
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A dark and comic novel, Congratulations On Everything tracks the struggles, frailties and cruelly pyrrhic victories of the middle-aged owner of a bar-restaurant and a 30ish lunch shift waitress.
Jeremy has bought into the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he’s risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack.
Everyone assumes Ice Shack daytime waitress Charlene is innocent and empathetic, but in reality she’s desperately unhappy and looking for a way out of her marriage to her high-school sweetheart. A drunken encounter between Charlene and her boss Jeremy sends them both careening. The Ice Shack stops being an oasis of sanity and, as Jeremy struggles to keep his business afloat, he’ll stop at nothing to maintain his successful, good guy self-image.
In an era when foodies rule and chefs become superstars, Congratulations On Everything is a hilarious and occasionally uncomfortable dose of anti-foodie reality that reveals what goes on when the customers and Instagrammers aren’t around — and even sometimes when they are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whitlock's second novel (after A Week of This) slyly masks immense depth of character and emotion behind wry humor and a simple story about seemingly uncomplicated people. Jeremy, who is nearing 50 and obsessed with being his own boss, owns the struggling Ice Shack, a Toronto bar and restaurant that attracts unremarkable but endearing patrons. Jeremy is oblivious to his flaws chiefly selfishness, and little business sense and has a continuous need for "investors." Of no help at all is Jeremy's devotion to the fictional business author Theo Hendra, whose behind-closed-doors antics destroyed his career and whose mistakes Jeremy should have tried harder not to replicate. The parallels between the idol and the man serve up some delicious irony. The motley crew of staff includes Charlene, a people-savvy but unhappily married waitress; Patty, a retired underappreciated teacher; and Tyler, a questionably proficient and socially awkward cook. Whitlock shows that characters don't need to be flashy to be interesting, just written well. Readers will find it hard not to see the Shack like the much-loved Cheers, though without the expectation that the owner knows or even wants to know the regulars' names.
