Stewart O'Nan is ranked among Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, and Alice McDermott--the major living American realists. O'Nan could be called a hyper realist--his attention to detail is such that you feel you're living through the experiences that he describes. O'Nan opens his celebrated novel, "Last Night at the Lobster," with a portrait of a car, a semi-living thing. It's a damaged Buick Regal--something "a grandmother might leave behind." It's traveling through the "far vastness" of a suburban shoppers' parking lot; it's headed toward a Red Lobster. Though this part of the lot is utterly empty, the car observes all painted-on boundaries. The car also signals a turn--"for no one's benefit." (These details are helping to teach us about the fastidious driver, a man we have not met.) This is a story about capitalism, about appetite. It's a novel about eating. A child eats a sundae and vomits on the carpet of th...