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Ecw Press - Cordelia Strube

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286 pages

English

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Toronto Book Award Winner Cordelia Strube is back with another caustic, subversive, and darkly humorous bookStevie, a recovering alcoholic and kitchen manager of Chappy s, a small chain restaurant, is frantically trying to prevent the people around her from going supernova: her PTSD-suffering veteran son, her uproariously demented parents, the polyglot eccentrics who work in her kitchen, the blind geriatric dog she inherits, and a damaged five-year-old who landed on her doorstep and might just be her granddaughter.In the tight grip of new corporate owners, Stevie battles corporate s 'restructuring' to save her kitchen, while trying to learn to forgive herself and maybe allow some love back into her life. Stevie s biting, hilarious take on her own and others foibles will make you cheer and will have you loving Misconduct of the Heart (in the immortal words of Stevie s best line cook) 'like never tomorrow.'

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	21 avril 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773054889
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Misconduct of the Heart
A Novel
Cordelia Strube

Contents
Praise for Cordelia Strube
Also By Cordelia Strube
Dedication
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
About the Author
Copyright

Praise for Cordelia Strube
“Strube is one of Canada’s more expressive and creative prose stylists. It is, at heart, a uniquely intimate exploration of the perilous fragility of the human body, and the indomitable strength of the human soul.” — Toronto Star on On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
“Quietly elegiac and despairing, the novel keeps true to Strube’s singular vision.” — Maclean’s on On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
“Strube’s true talent, which was as readily on display in her last novel, 2012’s Milosz, is for layering characters and situations and subplots on top of each other, one by one, until the entire Shangrila apartment building buzzes like a beehive.” — Globe and Mail on On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
“Canada’s best bet to succeed Alice Munro.” — Toronto Star
“[Strube] describes Milton’s absurd predicament in smart, eccentric prose . . . And yet, while we wince at Milton’s blunders, we applaud his limping progress toward a true connection with others and a hard-won faith in his own capabilities.” — The New York Times on Milton’s Elements
“Strube deftly navigates around the human heart in a way sometimes reminiscent of Carol Shields. The writing is so effortlessly accomplished that it makes me wonder where Cordelia Strube sprang from.” — Books in Canada on Alex & Zee
“Often witty and pointedly observant in the face of pain and absurdity.” — Newsday on Alex & Zee
“Filled with wry and shrewd observations about the agony of growing up.” — Chatelaine on Lemon
“A remarkable literary feat.” — Maclean’s on Blind Night
“Strube’s sure way with words, her mordant punchlines and equally sharp assessments of urban life on the edge of normal make this familiar story a compulsive read.” — Globe and Mail on Alex & Zee
“[Strube] tells a loopy story in clear, unadorned prose and with gentle irony.” — Montreal Gazette on Milton’s Elements
“ The Barking Dog is a rare achievement, an unstintingly honest, hilarious and dreadful delight.” — Globe and Mail
“Her portraits of characters caught in urban angst are riddled with laugh-out-loud humour. . . . Strube’s rueful insistence on contemplating human darkness is tempered by a certain wistfulness, a yearning for something finer, a flicker of hope that is never quite extinguished. . . . A book that crackles with anger, righteousness and a strange kind of passion for living.” — Edmonton Journal on The Barking Dog
“The bare-knuckled prose, reminiscent of early Margaret Atwood novels, is entirely free of metaphor or lyricism.” — Toronto Star on Teaching Pigs to Sing
“A heart-wrenching and daring subplot that leaves the reader shuddering . . . Strube knows very well those on the edge often have superior insight into what makes people tick.” — National Post on Blind Night

Also By Cordelia Strube
Novels
Alex & Zee
Milton’s Elements
Teaching Pigs to Sing
Dr. Kalbfleisch & the Chicken Restaurant
The Barking Dog
Blind Night
Planet Reese
Lemon
Milosz
On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
Stage and Radio Plays
Fine
Mortal
Shape
Scar Tissue
Attached
Caught in the Intersection
Marshmallow
Mid-Air
Absconder
On the Beach
Past Due

Dedication
For Carson

Epigraph
“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.”
— William Shakespeare, M acbeth

One
Bob is up my ass about the kitchen staff not completing their e-learning, a Corporate time-waster.
“Bob, my cooks don’t speak English. How are they supposed to e-learn?”
“If they don’t complete it, cut their shifts,” Bob says with the Latino/Pakistani accent he thinks is funny. Last week he used it on a Sri Lankan cook who’d just escaped an arranged marriage. “What are you doing?” Bob demanded, jabbing his hairy finger at her salad prep. “Stop it! Stop it! Stupid! Stupid! Thin slices only!”
I’d like to lock Bob in with the frozen meats, but we’re in my office, actually a closet with barely enough room to stand. Bob, his phone clamped between his ear and shoulder, holds up a finger to shush me when Desmond, the district manager, takes him off hold. “Des,” Bob bleats, “it’s not my fault a cook fell in the fryer.”
I visited Jesús in the burn unit this morning. He couldn’t lift his gauze-wrapped arm, had to wipe his tears with his left hand.
“Jesús,” I say loudly so Des the DM can hear, “will be off for at least a month. I want him back. He’s a good worker and has a family to feed.” I don’t mention the nurse’s warning—severely burned kitchen workers rarely return to their jobs, the scar tissue is too heat sensitive.
“Des wants to know how it happened.” Bob holds out the phone, which I don’t take because talking to Desmond makes me feel like bugs are trapped in my skull. A self-proclaimed outstanding leader and a body builder in love with his own image, Desmond wears muscle-hugging attire while babbling Corporatespeak.
“Jesús was trying to clean the hood,” I say loudly at the phone, “removed the grill and baskets, slipped and plunged his arm to the bottom of the fryer where the gas jets are. Presto, third-degree burns.” I don’t add that Jesús, dehydrated from the dinner shift, was hungover and had passed out. Or that our general manager—Bob—cuts labour costs by ordering the night crew to pull high-risk stunts like cleaning the fryers while the kitchen is still open.
Bob hangs up and wags the phone at me. “Stevie, you need to be keeping a closer eye on your staff. I don’t want to have to write you up to Corporate.”
I push past him, knowing he won’t write me up because I’m cheap and can cover every station. He adjusts his Chappy’s ballcap—rumour has it there’s a bald spot in that patch of shoe-polished hair—and points at me. “Corporate’s not happy a customer survey says we’re the stingiest Chappy’s in the chain. You need to be thinking about that.” He frequently tells me to think about things it’s not my job to think about.
“Corporate’s told us to weigh portions, Bob. Weighed means smaller. Praveen was being generous with the sour cream on baked until you threatened to write him up. And we’ve had numerous complaints about the new roll policy.” The latest proclamation from HQ stipulates only one roll per customer with a single pat of butter, exclusively with an entree, not a salad.
If I actually ran this kitchen instead of troubleshooting 24/7 because Corporate’s too cheap to cough up for a plumber to snake the drains, the fryer debacle would never have happened. I told Jesús to prep for Fish Friday. If he’d followed my instructions, he wouldn’t have been hanging over the fryer. But I’m only a kitchen manager with a vagina so why take orders from me? Particularly when you want to catch World Wrestling Entertainment on your phone. Jesús has the entire kitchen crew watching Hell in a Cell. I get why my mostly male staff enjoy viewing women in spandex thrashing each other, but it slows the line. The Divas Championship has the entire crew arguing in various languages about who’s number one. Jesús insists the Bella sisters “own” the Divas locker room.
I can’t shake Bob. He trails me while I make sure the line is ready and stocked, and the cooks at their stations. “Another reason,” he says, “we failed the office report is the break room. It’s disgusting . Staff toss things in there willy-nilly. We’re not required to provide a break room. If staff don’t keep it clean and tidy, Corporate will take it away.”
We need the break room because Corporate forbids kitchen staff from eating in the dining room. Even off-duty employees are banned from the dining delights at crappy Chappy’s. HQ believes staff socializing stirs up “gossip”—Corporate code for union talk. A couple of months ago, a Nicaraguan disher thought working conditions at Chappy’s ought to be better than in some cantina back home and talked union. His hours were cut in a hurry.
When I look up from the logbook, Conquer, my head cook, throws a frozen steak at the wall. “Jesús forgot to take the steaks out,” he growls. “I’m going to have to fart on these fuckers before I grill them.” Conquer is a Viking, piercingly blue-eyed, square-jawed and too mountain man for Bob, who scuttles back to his office while Conquer makes a show of blowing on the steak. A papered chef, he considers himself above the riff-raff like yours truly who’ve worked their way up the ranks. He insists on being called Chef but doesn’t wear the hat, just a bandana—biker style—that’s soaked in sweat halfway through a shift. “I need pans!” he roars.
Our Eritrean disher got hauled off by the feds so I head for the dishpit, roll up my sleeves and grab the hose. Conquer follows in hot pursuit, noticing my bruises—not for the first time. “You going to tell me who does that to you?” he demands with Chef authority. I ignore him. He thinks all women want his Nordic ass. Grabbing my wrists, he scowls at the purple splotches on my arms. “One of these days soldier boy is going to kill you.”
My son, Pierce, has what he ca