A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City

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In fact, many move from restaurant to restaurant, looking for a better position, for promotion to head waiter, or just for slightly improved money or conditions.

Chisholm succeeds in his aim to become a waiter, but inevitably things come to an end when he suffers an injury and moves onto a new job. REPRESENTATION QUERIES are not accepted via telephone, postal or courier mail, and are accepted only via this form. Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I lived in Copenhagen where I was registered with the Foreign Ministry as correspondent for The Times.It is now a frontier zone full of ‘paperless’ immigrants (Chisholm is one himself), the addicted and the mentally distressed. After months with no success, and his relationship with his girlfriend souring, He found himself alone in Paris with an apartment that he could not afford.

there are many reviews arguing for another round of editing to get rid of some redundant theme pages and while I agree it COULD do with that editing I don’t find it necessary as it brings the reader into the repetitive day to day that the author was experiencing.

The beauty of Paris is stripped, yet miraculously upheld, as I descended into Chisholm’s engrossing account of a Paris I’d never imagined. live, and so stubbornly he hangs on and tries to make his way through the underbelly of the Parisian restaurant world. Edward Chisholm was born in England and moved to Paris after graduating from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His written work has appeared in The New York Times, the Guardian, Telegraph Weekend Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times magazine, Air Mail, and the Daily Beast.

All Chisholm can afford is a shared room in a typical slum, with a blood-stained carpet and a sink doubling as a lavatory. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though it was sometimes hard to read – not in terms of the way it’s written but it’s a HARD life these people live and so, not your typical “City of Light” light summer read! After walking the cold streets, anxious to find any sort of work, Chisholm becomes a waiter earning €1,086. In these pages we sense the anarchy and hopelessness felt by many people in their 30s, who find that waiting for their lives to start is like waiting for Godot. a world of refugees, exiles, dreamers, sadistic and abusive managers, long hours, and, strangely enough, malnutrition .

I’d advise readers to enjoy it somewhere warm and comfortable, and on no account to try it before a gastronomic weekend.