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In the Kitchen: A Novel
 
 
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In the Kitchen: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Monica Ali (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 34.99
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In the Kitchen: A Novel + Brick Lane: A Novel
Price For Both: CDN$ 33.99

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Product Description

Review

"Mesmerizing. Few writers these days can strip characters to their very souls like Ali does."-- Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly

"Entertaining."-- People

"Wildly sympathetic, obsessed, hypocritical, delusional, human, Gabriel Lightfoot is an unforgettable protagonist, his descent into lunacy frighteningly recognizable, individual, profound."-- Pam Houston, O, the Oprah Magazine

"Monica Ali ... [is] a talented scene-builder and examiner of the human soul... A portrait of a middle-aged Holden Caulfield wandering the streets."-- Karen Sandstrom, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Ali is brilliant at showing loss and adaptation in a polyglot culture... In the Kitchen has the thud and knock of life -- inexplicable, impenetrable, now sewn up at all."-- Patricia Volk, Publishers Weekly

"Engrossing... Impressive... The work of a fearless writer determined to challenge herself."-- Kirkus (starred review)

Product Description

Monica Ali, nominated for the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, has written a follow-up to Brick Lane that will further establish her as one of England's most compelling and original voices.

Gabriel Lightfoot is an enterprising man from a northern England mill town, making good in London. As executive chef at the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, he is trying to run a tight kitchen. But his integrity, to say nothing of his sanity, is under constant challenge from the competing demands of an exuberant multinational staff, a gimlet-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is secretly planning a move to a restaurant of his own. Despite the pressures, all his hard work looks set to pay off.

Until a worker is found dead in the kitchen's basement. It is a small death, a lonely death -- but it is enough to disturb the tenuous balance of Gabe's life.

Elsewhere, Gabriel faces other complications. His father is dying of cancer, his girlfriend wants more from their relationship, and the restaurant manager appears to be running an illegal business under Gabe's nose.

Enter Lena, an eerily attractive young woman with mysterious ties to the dead man. Under her spell, Gabe makes a decision, the consequences of which strip him naked and change the course of the life he knows -- and the future he thought he wanted.

Readers and reviewers have been stunned by the breadth of humanity in Monica Ali's fiction. She is compared to Dickens and called one of three British novelists who are "the voice of a generation" by Time magazine. In the Kitchen is utterly contemporary yet has all the drama and heartbreak of a great nineteenth-century novel. Ali is sheer pleasure to read, a truly magnificent writer.

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In the Kitchen: A Novel
87% buy the item featured on this page:
In the Kitchen: A Novel 3.0 out of 5 stars (2)
CDN$ 21.94
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Brick Lane: A Novel 3.5 out of 5 stars (81)
CDN$ 12.05
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2 Reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars "Thinking only gets you so far Gabriel, Life carries on its own sweet way", July 15 2009
By Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
While set in a frenetic and fast-paced kitchen of a London hotel, Ali's latest book is really about the romantic and familial entanglements of the hotel's head chef Gabriel Lightfoot. Indeed Gabriel feels a bit out of place in this environment, most of his working life surrounded by a ramshackle collection of immigrants. Though born in, Blantwistle a small town in Lancashire, Gabriel has never really felt comfortable with his life in central London with his sympathies and memories more stuck in the county where his father, Ted, grandmother ,Nan, and his overweight sister Jenny still lives. Still at fort two, Gabriel needs a break. Fuelled with the best of intentions, he hopes to start his own fine restaurant and garner the respect of two ingratiating and contemptuous potential business partners, Rolly and Fairweather, one of which is a sitting MP - and also provide a comfortable future for his current girlfriend Charlie. But Gabriel's life takes in unexpected turn when one day when Yuri, a Ukrainian porter is found dead deep in the storage areas below the restaurant.

While the officious manager Mr. Maddox announces the restaurant would be closed, there seems to be little explanation as to why Yuri was found naked, his head awash with blood along with some splashes of what is possibly alcohol around the face. He must have been drinking, he bought it all on himself, and it was a sad accident. Certainly Gabriel failed to take charge of the situation and is aghast at the enormity of his managerial lapse. Further complicating matters is the discovery of the Belarusian Lena, an illegal pot washer, on the run from pimps and drug traffickers who Gabriel suddenly ensconces in his flat, her flesh and bone sexual wiles countering his dimming passion for Charlie. Lena lived down the basement with Yuri, but she refuses to tell him what happened with Yuri. A carved beauty, a dying swan, this skinny girl that had become his irritant and his ache is Gabriel`s "his ghostly girl." But Gabriel needs to wipe the slate and brand his indelible mark and he's constantly blinded by the fact that he just has to tell Charlie about Lena. Meanwhile, Jen sends the news that Ted is dying of cancer, causing Gabriel to return to Blantwistle with all of its agony of familiarity. It is here against the awful invisibility of home where Gabriel realizes he's living in a state of suspended animation, and in constant oscillation between unbearable tension and annihilating lethargy.

Awash in topicality, Ali peppers Gabriel's external dramas and inner conflicts with remonstrations on foreigners and progress, a booming UK economy and the country's deep-seated xenophobia with regard to immigrants and foreign workers. All the while Gabriel rages against the giant of his childhood, his father who is now this gaunt sick old man at whom it is implausible to direct all his rage. Ali's powers of description are evocative and colorful, especially that of central London as it hums its morning song, endlessly reverberating, one crescendo piling into the next with the rain, the smells, the billboards, the rumble of cars. Even as Gabriel walks and takes it all in, his mind is constantly engaged elsewhere. Although her main character is undoubtedly endearing, her novel failed to grab me as it has a narrative pace that is sacrificed at the expense of weighty diatribes about the changing face of British society. The reality of a changing world, represented by Gabriel's restaurant life is presented in start counterpoint to the more traditionally minded world of his family, especially his father. But unfortunately, we must slog through the considerable flotsam and jetsam of Gabriel's past to get back to the real story at hand. Mike Leonard July 09.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars I wish I hadn't read it., Oct 17 2009
By Schmadrian - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
I know; that's harsh. But true.

Just as it's true that having read it, I'd want to ask the author why she was compelled to write it.

So much of this novel just didn't sit right with me. I detested almost everyone in it. It reminded me of aspects of Britain that had my parents leave back in the 50s; it's unrelentingly a downer.

It's well written.

But it doesn't sparkle.

It doesn't even really transport you anywhere special or memorable.

Its main 'accomplishment' is the 'Oh, you have to be kidding me!' plot twist...which I won't give away. (Suffice it to say that I didn't feel that the character at the center of this twist deserved to have a novel constructed around them.)

A great example of misplaced talent...and effort.

(Personal rating: 7/10...simply because of the capable craftsmanship involved.)
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