Review: Monica Ali's In the Kitchen
In The Kitchen
by Monica Ali
(Doubleday, 2009)
I've watched way too many old BBC episodes of Gorden Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. That was proven as I worked my way through Monica Ali's latest novel In the Kitchen. Illegal aliens in the kitchen? Check. Fake flowers on the tables? Check. Problems with executive sous chefs? Check. Chef goes mad? Check. That said, initially, I couldn't put this book down. It opened with a murder and for some crazy reason I thought I would find out who did it. Silly me! Well, I guess I might've figured it out, but I was too exhausted at the end to care. I was morbidly fascinated by Gabe, the main character and head chef of a posh hotel restaurant, after the death of a Russian night porter in the chef's pantry is ruled an accidental death and the novel twists away from murder mystery into Gabe's breakdown. But, for some reason I kept thinking more would come of this death, especially because Gabe was so haunted by it. Silly me!
There was a point where I was loving all the bad decisions Gabe was making. No, he's not going to keep the poor Slavic Lena near-captive in his apartment! Why, yes ... he is! He won't confess this to his girlfriend! Why yes, he will! He's not going to walk out just before a huge important dinner service! Why yes, he will! But when he ends up having a breakdown and picking onions with illegal immigrants out on a god-forsaken farm?! Well, that was it! Yes, the backstory of his crazy mom supported his breakdown, but frankly, he became such a dark crazy Gabe, so utterly removed from the sensitive, ambitious chef I'd fallen for early in the novel that, well, it just didn't work for me. (Frankly, I hate that copout phrase, but it really does describe how I feel.)
I loved Ali's Alentejo Blue and Brick Lane, and will not abandon her work because of this one misstep. But truly, if you loved her other books, stay away from this one. Instead watch the Kitchen Nightmares episode where the humiliated chef hides from Ramsey and refuses to let him in the restaurant or answer his phone calls. It'll amount to about the same experience.